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butch-reidentified · 1 year ago

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ID: Screenshot reading "You will recognise it as an arguable point as soon as you switch the victim to a species that you think morally matters. Humans will inevitably die too" followed by a comma before the screenshot cuts off. It is not shown who the author is.

Preface: This will be a long post, but I think it's worthwhile as part of my efforts to open up real conversation about psychopathy and the stigma + misinformation surrounding it. The main reason I'm making a separate post instead of reblogging is that this post is not really intended to be about veganism. I'm more using the contents of the above screenshot to dive more into a topic I've touched on a few times recently.

Humans being "a species that you think morally matters" is an interesting assumption I often see vegan activists make. I've been undecided for a while about talking about this because I know how controversial this is and don't feel a strong desire to deal with the fallout of posting it/saying it outright, but seeing as I've always tried to be as honest and open as possible in here: I do not actually think humans "morally matter." I do not think killing is inherently wrong, either, regardless of species. Just about every creature on Earth engages in killing, either of each other or of members of other species, if not both. I don't think humans are sacred or special in any way, and thus are no exception. I don't see humans killing each other as any more INHERENTLY (this word is incredibly important here... obviously) wrong than, say, leopards killing each other. My culture used to engage in religious human sacrifice, so I have thought about this a whole lot, and it is a bit of a discourse topic in my community to this day (some even think we would be better off today if we had not stopped giving human sacrifices to the gods).

Most arguments for killing being inherently immoral that I've encountered are directly or indirectly rooted in religion, a societal value accepted without question, and/or the result of emotional reactions. One response I often get to this is that if I don't think killing is inherently wrong, I'm not allowed to be sad about it or grieve when people are killed - the idea being that this is somehow hypocritical. This is nonsense. I don't believe abortion is wrong in any way, but I'd never dream of telling someone who had mixed feelings about her abortion that she was a hypocrite for it*. Having complex, mixed, or even negative emotions about something does not make that thing immoral. Not to jump too far into moral philosophy**, but my view is that emotional responses are not - or at least should not be - an indicator of morality in any capacity. I suspect that more people agree with me on this than realize they do, and here is an example of why: Some people feel badly about killing an insect in their home, but most people do not consider this wrong. Even when it comes to humans, many - if not most - people would likely experience negative emotions when they kill out of genuine necessity, such as in self-defense, but very few people will argue that this is morally wrong, that you should just allow yourself to be harmed or killed if someone attacks you.

In this sense, it would be most logically consistent for me to view hunting wild animals in their own territory (as opposed to shit like when rich people transport animals to a personal hunting ground so they're guaranteed not to lose their prey) for food as morally superior to livestock farming, and I very much do. Traditional hunting is the method of killing for food most similar to that of other animals, as far as I understand. That said, I'm not remotely an expert on the topic beyond having hunted before as a kid and having a general understanding of animal behavior at the college level.

However, I will not pretend like I always behave consistently with the moral conclusions I come to. Like I've discussed before, I don't have an emotional response to violating my own morals. I simply didn't come wired with that feature. I don't really feel guilt or shame, so when I do something "bad," whether by my standards or others' standards, I either don't care at all or make a deliberate effort to cognitively "scold" myself, depending on the circumstances. I do consume meat that I have not personally hunted in the wild. While I do not think that livestock farming, especially modern livestock farming, is good in any way (ethically but also environmentally and health wise), because I don't have an emotional reaction to that thought (but do receive dopamine when I eat tasty food), I have so far been unable to convince myself to stop consuming meat.

I have said previously that I am glad that I am the way that I am, and that remains true; I do think my psychopathic traits are overwhelmingly more beneficial than not. This, however, is one example of the ways it actually is a negative to me - I really can't force myself to care about something I don't care about by default, and often have a hard time making conscious decisions that run counter to what produces dopamine. For this same reason, I have repeatedly failed to cut out gluten despite my doctor's insistence that I need to, and despite knowing how much better I feel (no daily migraines!) when I do abstain from it for a while. I tried to go vegan before and found that I latched onto very unhealthy junk food that was vegan by nature, like Oreos, and was eating incredibly badly. It does not help that I don't know how to cook, partly because my genetic disabilities make cooking a difficult endeavor for several reasons.

I am well aware that some people may be upset by this post, and may feel a need to label me a bad person for being this way. This is your prerogative, and I am certainly open to hearing your responses to this post, within reason. If all you want is to "punish" me for this, send me hate anons and insults, feel free, but I'll go ahead and let you know it doesn't do anything to me... not to mention I'm very used to it already as a radfem blogger. If you still want to do so because it makes you feel righteous or something, by all means go ahead, just be aware that it will not elicit a response from me in any way you'd desire, and definitely won't change my thought processes or behaviors. If you want to have an actual conversation, though, I'm more than happy to engage, answer questions, and hear your perspectives.

*I chose this specific example not because anti-choicers think abortion is killing, but because I have seen women be told that their sadness or grief about an abortion (which, btw, does NOT mean she regrets it!) is somehow "pro life" and that she can't talk about how she feels or else the right wing will use it against us. This is also nonsense, and fucked up nonsense at that. The right wing will use whatever they can; I'm in no way disagreeing with that. However, silencing women and girls to serve a narrative is not the answer. The lived experiences of women and girls (or any marginalized persons) cannot ever be devalued or concealed just because the enemy would use them against us. Actually, this is the same response I have given when told I should hide the fact that I didn't regret my mastectomy, or even that I should pretend that I did regret it. My story, my truth, is mine to own and discuss as I choose, whether it could be weaponized by ideological opponents or not. Same is true for all marginalized persons.

** If you are interested in moral philosophy, specifically where morals come from/what people base morals in, this page and the following pages (there's a Next button in the bottom right corner) sum it up pretty well on Page 1, then dive in a good bit more thoroughly with individual pages for each "root cause" of moral systems.

Side note: I will be reblogging this later because it's 6:30am EDT and a lot of my audience is in the USA. I worked hard and spent a lot of time on this, so I'd like it to actually be seen. Not much point trying to educate/inform/raise awareness if nobody sees it lmao

#mine #emotionality #morality #moral philosophy #moral systems #anchor system #personal #vegan discourse #long post #text post #psychopathy

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nyxelestia · 4 years ago

Link

Vox article about the infamous wall of tags fic.

tl;dr at the end

What it’s about and why we care / article quotes:

All that, by itself, isn’t enough to make STWW remarkable — not on a website as wild and unpredictable as AO3. Yet the fic has become impossible for many AO3 users to ignore thanks to a unique quirk: Its author has linked it to more than 1,700 site tags (and counting).

Guides to how to block the fic have cropped up. For example, I use a Chrome extension that blocks fics with too many tags (you can specify how many tags is too many — I picked 50); there’s also simple site code that you can add to your custom site “skin” to block the fic completely from search results, as well as other workarounds.

But the usefulness of these options is limited. Site skins only work for logged-in users. Website extensions don’t work on mobile. Many other workarounds aren’t compatible with adaptive technology like screen readers used by disabled people and others — and if you think having to scroll past the tags on a phone is obnoxious, imagining getting stuck on it while a screen reader laboriously recites all 1,700 tags out loud.

(Emphases mine.)

My take on this specific fic:

I was sympathetic when I thought that maybe the author is just unaware of what they’re doing - but they have been made aware, they know exactly the effect they are having on other users and the community at large, and they’re still doing it.

[The author] acknowledged the controversy around their fic but emphasized that they were operating completely within AO3’s rules. “If AO3 has a category or a big red warning checkbox to say ‘click this to read crazy fics’ then I should put my fic in there,” they joked. “People are free to search (my) fic or exclude the fic using tags.”

Virtual1979 also remained steadfast when I pointed out that their fic was breaking the site for disabled users, stressing that the onus should be on AO3 — not them — to make enforceable site changes.

So now my sympathy’s all dried up. I do not remotely believe them when they say they aren’t a troll. Maybe they truly didn’t start out trolling, but they were repeatedly asked to stop, told about the impact they were having, and have themselves admitted on their Twitter account that they are laughing all the way to the bank.

A tweet they have since deleted - I did not think to grab a screenshot. So here is a screenshot of them saying they routinely delete their own Tweets, and their reaction to people who ask them to stop over-tagging their fic:

Maybe they started out as a well-intentioned new poster, unfamiliar with AO3 or how tagging works. And knowing fandom, I’m sure they faced some harassment for it. However, given they’ve been repeatedly asked to stop, and explicitly told how they are negatively affected so many other users’ ability to interact with the fandom and the website as a whole...and do not care, and continue to keep at it?

Freedom of speech gives them the right to be an asshole, but it also gives me the right to call them an asshole.

But, I do understand why AO3 isn’t banning them, and I agree with AO3′s current decision not to remove this fic. There needs to be some deeper changes, but banning this specific author or fic right now would likely cause more problems down the road than it solves right now.

What is the line for “Too Many Tags”? What would it mean for authors of non-anthology works? What impact would banning this over-tagged fics have on other over-tagged-but-not-as-badly fics? What will it mean for our culture of curating your content and experiences if blacklisting tags gets compromised due to such limits?

I’ve been frustrated by over-tagged fics before, and I certainly hope this will make other, well-meaning, good-faith authors reconsider decisions while compiling anthologies of their disconnected works going forward. Neither of these mean fans should expect AO3 to respond to mob rule and ban this fic.

My take on this article beyond this specific fic:

I disagree with the implication from the article that this is related to fandom’s longstanding issues concerning racism (and other -isms and -phobias) in fanfic. After all, the vast majority of fandom’s racism, sexism, misogyny, etc. isn’t tagged. At most, you can expect that certain ships or tags probably mean there will be certain racist tropes.

This does a disservice towards fans of a ship who don’t partake in or propagate those racist tropes - I myself included in that group. I routinely got comments on my fic from people who expected me to use racist tropes and fanons because of the ship tag on my fic, as these tropes were (and really, still are) so strongly associated with the ship. More importantly, there is no reliable way to tell from a fic’s meta-data whether there will be something in the fic the author doesn’t identify.

The fundamental problem with racism in fandom is not “people are making these racist things” but “people refuse to acknowledge these things they are making are racist” - and AO3′s meta-data is entirely self-identifying.

If an author does not think their work is racist, then they will not tag it as such, which means the rest of us will have no way of knowing until after we’ve already read the racism.

“Curate your own reading” is very applicable to things authors are willing to identify and tag in their own works - such as kinks, violence, etc. But if it is something the author did not intend, and does not agree with/identify, then readers who oppose it cannot curate against it.

Which is why I find this paragraph so misleading, specifically the part I bolded:

Throughout 2020, during sustained discussions across social media about structural racism and other toxic elements in fandom, AO3 users repeatedly requested that the site add basic features that could help users avoid involuntarily engaging with fics they found toxic or harmful. For example, currently there’s no real way to officially sanction a writer who includes racist elements in their fanfiction — the site’s abuse policy FAQ doesn’t mention race, and there’s currently no way to “warn” readers about racially charged elements in a fic. (You can warn readers about other controversial fic content, like character deaths, non-consensual scenarios, and underage characters.) And there are many readers who’d like to avoid engagement with fics and authors they deem to be racist.

These are tags an author can add onto their own work...but readers cannot warn other readers about an author’s work! And to be clear, I think that’s a good thing overall - readers being able to add their own tags to someone else’s work leaves way too much room for abuse, which would happen far more than readers warning other readers about things the author refuses to identify or tag. My point here is that apart from “how to deal with works and authors you already know are assholes”, there is no connection between this specific fic and its ensuing mess, and the broader problems of pervasive racism in fandom.

The only thing the wall of tags situation and the fandom racism situation have in common, at least in relation to AO3, is that fans want to block certain authors or works whom you already know are assholes. This, the Vox article got right.

However, there are many, many ways to be an asshole other than racism. There are many reasons to block specific works or authors besides racism. There are many types of abuse and harassment besides racism. Acting as if “blocking toxic works or people” is inherently and automatically about the on-going discussions about race in fandom reduces racism to individual acts and actors, and ignores its nature as a systemic problem.

tl;dr

While there are work-arounds to avoid that fic with 1700+ tags (and others), these workarounds are very limited in their helpfulness.

Author has the right to do this, but freedom of speech also gives the rest of us the right to call them out for their poor behavior. I 100% believe they are now an intentional bad-faith actor / troll, even if they did not necessarily start out as one.

Despite my disdain, I understand and agree with AO3′s decision to not remove the fic or ban the author, however much I hate them both. All of AO3′s decisions have ramifications and implications beyond the immediate situations they are made for. This one fic/author should not get to chip away at AO3′s mission against censorship.

Apart from the very broad nature of blocking toxic people or abusive works, I don’t think this situation has anything to do with racism. Implicating individual behavior and tagging as a related referendum is reductive to the systemic nature of fandom racism.

#ao3 #otw #fandomshatepeopleofcolor #racism in fandom #wangxian #on fandom #fandom meta #the untamed #long post

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radramblog · 4 years ago

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What happened to Dirk in Homestuck^2?

Why am I doing this to myself.

I memed a little yesterday when I was posting that article around social medias about Homestuck jokes, because once again we are in lockdown and I am therefore Stuck at Home. Canned laughter goes here. But there’s a topic related to the comic- or more specifically, its aborted sequel, Homestuck^2, that I’m interested in delving into a little bit. I’m going to avoid talking about spoilers as much as possible, but considering said comic takes place not only after the events of the massive sprawl that is Homestuck but also the more linear but still messy Epilogues, some amount of sus shit is inevitable.

Anyway. Much maligned is what the Epilogues and 2 did to everyone’s favourite decapitation target, Dirk Strider, and I have a theory as to why it happened this way.

To begin with, let’s summarise what and who Dirk is through the course of the comics. Fair warning from me, though, it’s been a while since I read through this.

Dirk Strider is a teenager who grew up in a post-apocalyptic future Earth, completely devoid of physical contact with other people and only really ever gets to talk to 3 other people, only one of whom is in anything remotely resembling a relatable situation. He struggles with self-identity, having created numerous robots including an artificial intelligence based on his own brain, aka Lil’ Hal. He’s somewhat of a control freak, and a bit of a cold aloof asshole, but means well, and is pretty gay. NBD. The kinda guy to set up a plan meticulously and thoroughly, not informing any of the moving parts even if said parts are his friends, and often involving some form of self-sacrifice.

Throughout the comic he further reckons with self-identity problems and his own self-loathing including entering a relationship with Jake which doesn’t go well and he eventually breaks off since he knows his overbearing and manipulative behaviour is Not Cool and Pretty Toxic but doesn’t know how to shut it off. Eventually he reaches the God Tier as a Prince of Heart, gaining the power to literally annihilate souls, which he never actually uses since he gets yeeted into deep (Paradox) space and then everything goes to shit. Except none of that happens because of the Retcon (aside from the God Tier bit) and we don’t actually see how that shit progressed in the canon timeline. I think. Dirk’s arc, as it were, doesn’t really come full circle- while he does assist in Dave’s character…growth? he really isn’t the focus of that conversation. This immediately precedes the action climax and there isn’t literally any dialogue after that so that’s what we’re left with.

I like Dirk in Homestuck a lot. It’s hard not to, considering the flashes heavily featuring him (Unite/Synchronise and Prince of Heart: Rise Up) are genuinely excellent, along with many of his music themes being absolute bangers. He gets to interact with Caliborn a lot, with a pretty great banter, there, and the whole splintered personality thing is a really interesting hook for a character. I think he’s my favourite of the Alpha kids, a controversial pick considering I know everyone loves Roxy so much. I think, I’m not as in tune with the fandom as that statement implies I am.

And then the Epilogues/Homestuck 2 came.

Now I read the Meat half of the epilogues first, but that’s more interesting, so we’ll tackle Candy first (this is going to get real confusing for those who haven’t read this comic, huh).

In Candy, Dirk almost immediately kills himself, citing the irrelevance of the timeline as cause, an act considered by whatever mechanism governs God Tier deaths to be Just because he hates himself (and also bc of things we’ll get into), so it actually sticks. This isn’t super relevant for the discussion, but that’s just kinda so unbelievably fucked up? Entirely? I’d imagine if you read Candy first you might get entirely turned off by this, which I��m sure a lot of people did.

Meat is where the, well, meat of post-canon Dirk is. You see, a concept very quickly introduced in the tail end of the original comic is the Ultimate Self, an idea where you somehow encompass every different timeline iteration or alternate version of yourself. This was pretty clearly tacked on to make it so characters whose arcs all happened in the retcon timeline could have their not getting an actual arc explained away, but it didn’t land then and it sure doesn’t land for me now. Anyway, in Meat, Dirk becomes his ultimate self, making him near-omniscient and able to control the fabric of the story himself- for much of this story, he is the narrator. And he uses this power to fuck with all his friends really distressingly without their knowledge (or consent), including breaking up a marriage, in order to further his own goals which largely appear to be just keep the story going so to not fade out of relevance. It’s a plot that makes no sense with his previous characterisation, but I guess now that he’s the Ultimate Self he’s a different person? But I liked old Dirk, and I don’t like New Dirk. He’s a villain now, but he made a much better anti-hero.

But this would be fine if he (or the epilogues, or Homestuck^2) were written well. But they aren’t. Dirk’s dialogue is long, painfully drawn out, with tangents that tend to amount to pure wank, misused literary references and pointless metaphors that go on and on, filling the screen with a bright orange screed that hurts to look at as much as it does to comprehend. It’s not fun. And we’ve seen Dirk communicate before, obviously, the story of Homestuck is built around chatlogs, but it wasn’t like this. He was sarcastic, dryly witty, blunt at times. Even when he was literally talking to a different version of himself it didn’t get that masturbatory.

I was so confused about what the hell happened to Dirk, because I had no idea what the hell someone writing this character was thinking when they turned him into this. And then, the 21st page of Homestuck^2 dropped.

And it all came together.

What Ultimate Dirk and Terezi are referring to is Pony Pals: Detective Pony, a children’s book about some girls who hang out with ponies and solve a mystery. It’s a real book, buy it for your 5-year-old.

Except they’re not referring to that, they’re referring to the Homestuck Canon version of Detective Pony- a birthday gift from Dirk to Jane, heavily edited and to be much more obscene and eventually developing into it’s own story, stated to be “tough, emotionally draining, but cathartic in all the worst ways possible”.

Except the quote “Remember Longcat, Jane?” and references to philosophy, dead languages, and ancient earth culture aren’t referring to the three pages of the Dirk-edited Detective Pony we see in the actual comic itself. That quote doesn’t appear there.

That image is from Detective Pony, by Sonnetstuck- the 40,000 word fanfiction from 2014 that serves as a completed version of Jane’s copy of the book. An expansion of what we see in canon. And it’s a tough, emotionally draining read, but cathartic in all the worst ways possible.

It’s a very good fanfiction.

In the later bits of Detective Pony, we can start to see the origins of what would become Ultimate Dirk’s signature style of writing. Long blocks of rambling text, orange dripping down the page, references to philosophy and history and language that go on and on. And it probably does look familiar to those who read the Epilogues and ^2.

But there are a couple of key differences here. First of all, it’s just better written? The way these rambles circle back on themselves is so excellent, the absolute absurdity of this being written on top of a pony book for little girls, the humour (beyond some of the more immature stuff), it’s just a really well-written piece of fiction. Hell, you don’t even need to be familiar with the character of Dirk to enjoy it. It’s a harrowing piece, but it’s also self-aware- because it’s not supposed to be tough, draining, cathartic etc. just for Jane- it’s clearly that for Dirk himself.

The second part is, of course, that this is a fanfiction. It’s not canon, it’s not official, this is by someone who really likes Dirk for people who really like Dirk. It doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, so if you bounce off it (and I’m sure a lot did), then you don’t have to keep reading it, it’s fine, thanks for playing. As much as Homestuck^2 tried to doll itself up as “dubiously canon” it’s still the official continuation of the story, and that means if it’s as difficult to get into as Detective Pony, that’s going to be a problem for a lot of people.

The other part of it is that Detective Pony’s exploration of Dirk’s character is, well, in character. When the man himself steps in as a character in his own book, the explorations of what he is as an author, who he is as a person, make perfect sense for what we see of him at the start of the comic. He is that manipulative, blunt person, and he is aware of his faults. He’s the kind of person to hide a lamentation on his own failings inside an impenetrable maze of a story layered on top of a book about fucking ponies. Ultimate Dirk does not act like Dirk, outside of the “manipulator” angle, something that Dirk was aware of and trying to improve in the comic. But I guess people don’t have arcs, right?

It’s so interesting to see the seeds of Homestuck^2 laden within Detective Pony- because the meta angle that and the epilogues take is also represented in said fanfiction. While the nature of canon is a facet of the work, the idea of authors and narrators fighting for control of a story, different ideas in mind for the characters, one being more personally connected to them than the other, it’s all there. When I wrote about Fallout 4 in the past, I mentioned being worried that Bethesda took the wrong lessons from Skyrim- seeing something successful and trying to recapture that lightning in a bottle. I think Homestuck^2 is an extreme example of this- the writers of the comic saw Sonnetstuck’s masterwork and thought, yeah that’s great, we can do that. But they just can’t. And with the comic crashed and burning, the probably won’t ever get a chance to. Dirk is forever stuck as this amalgamation of himself that looks nothing like any individual version of him ever did.

At least we will still have Detective Pony, and many other excellent fanworks, for actually good Dirk content. I admittedly haven’t looked into much fanfic written during/post-epilogues, and I’m kind of afraid of what I’ll see- I can only hope the fanbase didn’t take the same wrong lessons as the official team did.

#ramble #honestly more of an essay #homestuck #homestuck 2 #dirk strider #ultimate dirk #just ignore me accidentally posting this to the wrong account and having to reup it

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ohnobjyx · 4 years ago

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Why does it snow?

(Yes, I’ll keep using the snow theme, it’s fitting).

Part 3: Underlying issues

Okay, so I’ll try to explain in this post why people reacted so strongly to this matter. Let’s keep in mind that, as a country, they underwent an extremely fast technological and economic development. I don’t want to talk about politics, but let’s not forget that it’s a esential part of every society, as it constitutes how it’s governed.

Disclaimer: I try to keep things objective (if I include my personal opinion, it’s in cursive and in brackets), but I’m biased because of the XZ friendly content I’m usually exposed to and by my own views of their situation. Open to discussion, but please make sure you’ve enough information to do so.

So, let’s go!

For better or for worse, XZ’s fans incident touched issues Chinese netizens have had for years now. People did discuss about this before, and it will probably be discussed in the future.

Let’s keep in mind that I present here a rather negative view of a part of the C- society. That’s because we are placing a magnifying glass on a small part of the fandom, so by no means all C-fans are like this. These are all a minority.

“Fan quan” culture

This is a big one. “Fan” in this case is an anglicism, so it means “fan”. “Quan” means “circle”, as the people who belong to the same group. The best translation for “fan quan” would be “fandom”, but it has more connotations than fandom has.

So in a fandom there is a lot of people that share a common interest, XZ, in this case. There are groups in w/ibo for people that belong to a certain fandom, and that’s different than following the supertopic of that said interest.

To enter the group, you have to apply for it, and a moderator has to accept you in the group. Belonging to a group like this is accompanied by some rules, like “be loyal to the celebrity”, “not mentioning other celebrities in the group”, “supporting your celebrity by getting their endorsements” or “defending him”.

(We are talking about before... after this incident, a lot of groups have “relaxed” in their rules, and now they consist more in “don’t enter in discussions with other fandoms”, “don’t create heated discussions”, “be rational in your pursue”, at least in XZ’s. This however, is second-hand information: I’m not in any group, neither XZ’s nor WYB’s, so I don’t know how they are right now from the inside).

So a fandom can change a fan. I’m sure there’s a psychological investigation somewhere out there about how these things work. It’s in this kind of environment that “extreme” fans appear.

These are fans are willing to go to great lengths to show their support for their idol, some of them going to points like sasaengs, invading the idol’s privacy. They act in ways that perturb the normal progression of things, they are very disruptive, and some of them even try to buy votes for their idol.

(Please remember that these are a minority, but when you have 30 million fans... even a small percentage is a huge number of people. In Western countries, these kind of “fans” also appear from time to time: stalkers that go to great lengths to chase a celebrity).

The fandom culture has shapen how the entertainment industry works. It’s a symbiotic relationship:

Celebrities are successful and popular thanks to their fans, who all belong to a fandom with their name. They depend on them, as fans are more likely to watch a film or a drama if their favourite actor/actress appears in it, no matter what genre (that’s why companies also analyse what kind of people conforms their fandom, to target the kind of genre would more likely be watched by the celebrities’ fans). They also depend on them for things like endorsements, as some fans see buying things recommended by their celebrity as an act of “loyalty”.

However, fans have a large influence on what a celebrity does. The idol is severely criticized if they do something the fandom doesn’t approve of. There has been instances where people drop the fandom if the idol choose a role the fandom doesn’t like (like how WYB lost fans for trying for a BL drama, he wasn’t even casted yet), and an idol can lose their popularity if they choose a partner the fandom isn’t happy with (or if they choose a partner at all, we’ve said that there is a type of fans that fantasize with being said idol’s partner, so if they have a bf/gf or if they marry, these fans’ fantasy is broken).

So we can see that the extreme fans are a problem, and why celebrities can’t outright reject fandom culture. They can disagree with the most extreme ones (like how WYB and XZ did in May), but they can’t simply say, “let’s dissolve all of the groups”.

That’s why in recent years, a lot of people has been rejecting the fandom culture. But a big fandom and an influential idol can also serve to positive purposes, like charity and public welfare projects.

That’s what XZ has been trying to do, to show that fandom can still produce things that are useful for the society, and to avoid people being ashamed of being his fan.

State control

As we know, the cultural industry in China is subject to state control. However, have you ever wondered why did only ao3 get banned from the country? What about the page that hosted MDZS original novel? And other fanfiction sites? The website that hosted the novel wasn’t an “illegal” one. In fact, it’s very public, and they earn money by people paying subscriptions to their page to access their content, that’s not just limited to BL novels.

(Heavens know that the novel was very explicit, and that it’s just a drop of water in the ocean: there are thousands of works like this one out there).

So, why did 2/27 provoke so much anger? Because the accusers took advantage of the power of the government.

Fandom culture gives an important boost to economy. It’s not just about entertainment, with the endorsements, fandom culture promotes consumerism (people buy things not because they need it, but because it’s endorsed by their favourite artist).

That’s why the government doesn’t only tolerate them, but even promotes secretly this kind of culture by not strictly enforcing laws and regulations. That’s why websites and novels that don’t comply with Chinese censorship laws have been “allowed” to exist until now (take for example the whole “danmei” genre, that MDZS belongs to). As long as no one reports them, the state will turn a blind eye to these kind of websites.

(Many of you may be asking, if a novel is “allowed”, why censor the tv drama? Well... the cover of the book wasn’t even remotely explicit, but videos and images of two men kissing each other, that’d definitely be banned by the government. Text is subtler that a picture, I suppose).

In words of a former worker of the state regulation department, if there exists such a content, it needs to be censored. However, this places the regulation department in a tight spot, because it subjects them to rejection from the people and the anger of the commercial companies.

Usually what if there’s no report, the department won’t investigate even if they’ve heard that the content is questionable, but if it’s reported, they must look into it.

So the fans didn’t just report it, they announced loudly and widely that they were reporting it, so the department could only investigate, there was no other option. By that time, the matter had originated great conflict and discussion, and, after arising so much controversy, and with people knowing what kind of content had been reported, ao3 could only be banned if they didn’t want to people stop taking the government seriously.

Thus, in this case, the regulation department has been used as a weapon in this fan war. This is not to say that the government is “innocent”, it’s to say that the accusers had reported the work and announced it knowing exactly what would happen.

This has been a phenomenon in the last years: the “report culture”. People use this as a weapon: they know that if they report, your content is going to be banned. So it can be used as a threat, leaving the other party defenceless if their content is really not approved by the country.

However, this kind of behaviour has enacted the rejection from the general public, as it’s seen as a cowardly behaviour: you don’t like their content, so you report them, knowing full well what’s going to happen.

(To put it simply: there’s a guardian, a keeper, in the playground, that it’s in charge of the children in the playground. This keeper has set rules that the children must follow, but there are too many children, so he can’t keep an eye on every single one. However, he will listen if a child goes to him and tells him that another has broken a rule. He’ll go and teach them a lesson. But the keeper is busy, and sometimes likes the things the children do, even if they are breaking the rules, so he turns a blind eye on them. But if he ignores the children who tell on their mates, and doesn’t punish the wrongdoer, other children will start to do as they please, so he has no other option than to punish them. Other children realize this, and soon, calling the keeper is made into a very effective threat against other children.)

This brings us to a point that’s very important...

We have to take into account that all industries have to show their loyalty to the government, no matter who they are. So the celebrities and the companies behind them, no matter what they think, have to express their loyalty and nationalism, especially since they are in such a visible spot. Even if they don’t have such feelings, they must pretend at least (but the majority are very patriotic, since it goes into the younger generations’ education).

So before considering to criticize their government, we must be aware that both WYB and XZ, as well as any other Chinese idol you might like, live in there. Expressing very anti-governmental opinions identifying as their fans might actually hurt them rather than help them (this was a problem from twitter a few months ago, from what I know. So please, don’t do that).

Some haters actually spread rumours of celebrities being unpatriotic quite frequently, to make the government look into it. These kind of rumours are the deadliest for them, and can actually retire them, so please, be careful with what you say while saying that you are their fan.

That’s also why XZ can’t say anything about ao3 being banned from the country, no matter what he thinks. Better not to enter that place.

“Xiao xianrou”

In recent years, more and more new celebrities are very good looking. So much that it’s more than just a suspicion that they get their jobs because of their looks rather than actual talent. They also get numerous fans because of their beauty. These young idols receive the name of “xiao xianrou”. It’s very noticeable when you compare them to the older generation of artists, who don’t have a face that would stop a crowd, but have a lot of talent.

Being a xiao xianrou doesn’t mean that they don’t have talents (XZ is considered one too), it’s just a name that these new celebrities receive. However, people feel that new celebrities nowadays are very good looking, but have no skills.

(This is just an example of what it’s called xiao xianrou. Remember, it doesn’t mean that they are talentless!)

Of course, not every good looking artist nowadays must be completely useless in anything else (we can all think of 2 good examples). In fact, people who get into the industry, and manage to stay there and continue working after, let’s say, 5 years, definitely has something more than just good looks. But people also feel that to stay in the industry when one isn’t so handsome must be purely because of their abilities with acting/singing/dancing.

However, it’s also a fact that some of the new dazzlingly beautiful idols have singing or dancing abilities that aren’t so outstanding. A lot of good plots and dramas have been ruined by actors who are handsome and beautiful, but don’t know how to act to save their life.

So for people who are very upset with this, when they saw the news about XZ and the comments of the antis saying that he had no acting skills, they thought that this was just another one of them, and jumped on the train of criticizing without actually knowing how his acting skills are or what happened. It was just a way of venting their displeasure with a whole other issue that has actually nothing to do with XZ.

W/ibo (W/)

This platform is a part of the problem. To start with, w/ earns money the same way twitter and instagram do, so for them it’s essential that people spend a lot of time in their website/app.

While positive people spend time on their platform, another group that do that is haters and antis.

W/ is full of netizens spreading hate, insults and cyber-bullying other people, but the platform itself doesn’t do anything to change this. And this happens because W/ profits from it. The more time a hater and a anti spend in W/, the more W/ profits from it. Sometimes, it’s W/ who sets marketing accounts that attack a certain idol.

Moreover, an account with lots of followers will get more money from the platform (like youtube). That’s why people that have no particular reason to hate xz turn into antis and dedicate themselves to spreading hate, gaining followers from people who resent him from 2/27 or fans that hate him for any other reason. And that’s also why haters accounts appear and spread, and why W/ doesn’t always block them.

This is why when a celebrity or any other people who got insulted or has been systematically attacked on Internet, they can only report it to the police and let lawyers handle the issue. However, legal processes are long and take time and money, so many people don’t do it (especially idols, who can have a lot of antis).

Seeing that people are starting to realize this, and protesting about being left defenceless on the Internet, W/ started recently a project to stop malicious content and hate (looks like just playing the part to me, tbh).

Another problem this platform has is the privacy inside the communities and the false accounts.

This platform holds communities where people can talk and share things they like. However, in groups of fans of a certain idol, there are also “spies” that sell information about the characteristics of the group or antis that disguise themselves as fans to continue spreading rumours and false news from inside the group.

This is what happened a little earlier in February, before 2/27: an anti got into a bjyx group, but all of his comments were to belittle XZ and praise WYB. Even if people know that this is not true, after seeing it for a while, it’s bound to affect their image of the idol.

And last...

This is not exactly a “problem”, but I couldn’t include it anywhere else.

The economy and money is why XZ’s company haven’t given him up yet. For one, XZ has signed many contracts with several companies, so he can’t leave even if he wanted to, because he’d end up with a debt in the millions. For another one, the companies don’t want to give up on him yet, because he himself hasn’t committed any grave mistake (like, none, in fact).

If it comes to it, they’ll “kill the hen and get the eggs” (meaning they’ll get what they can and discard XZ) but for now XZ is still very popular and he’s earning a lot of money for the company. So, right now, XZ isn’t a failed investment, just a very dangerous one (in case his reputation deteriorates again), but companies have put too much money on him to give up at the first sight of problem. That’s why XZ’s Studio is valiantly trying to separate XZ from those crazed fans, and declaring them from being independent of XZ.

Actually, one of the companies he signed with was on the verge of bankruptcy when they signed the contract (before CQL, I think). After the boom last year, they were actually counting on him to reverse their situation with the new dramas, but they didn’t expect 2/27. So now, they are one of the most interested in getting XZ back to work, and to air his dramas successfully. It’s for selfish reasons, but it serves XZ’s interests.

However, companies do and will dare to “lick the blood from the knife” (it’s a continuation of the previous idiom, to lick the blood of the hen and it means to get even the last drop of profit).

If XZ doesn’t enter the government’s black list of celebrities, they’ll continue to get the earnings from his fans’ “offerings” (the crazed fans who buys his every endorsement + rational fans buying their favourite artist’s endorsements they actually like).

The future of the entertainment industry is uncertain, from both economic and social (epidemic) points of view, so this is to be taken into account when considering this problem.

←Part 2: A sudden snowstorm | Part 4: Plum blossoms in the snow (I) →

#gg's situation #part 3 of 7 #my post

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joverflowers · 4 years ago

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So I become an army recently (Jan 21) and I’ve been obsessed with everything BTS related lol... watched all run + the soop and wanna start the bon voyage seasons but something happened this week and now I’m so disheartened, shook and disappointed.

I’ve found this thread on Twitter talk about all the problematic things BTS has said and done in the past and that none of them acknowledged it nor apologized for some of these actions.

It had everything from being racist, classists, colourism and cultural appropriation and to even disrespecting various religions.

Idk if I want to Stan them anymore. As much as it hurts me (since I genuinely loved these guys) I can’t have the same innocent fondness of them I once had without always subconsciously going back to these things.

What would you do in this situation? Also did you have any idea? Did BTS ever talk about any of these issues? I just need it to rant and get this out of my system since I’m going crazy 💔

Hello dear. First of all, I am very sorry to hear that you had to go through a disheartening experience all by yourself while searching for answers.

I am directly going to answer your question on what I would do in a situation like this as a person who’s been in the fandom for a couple of years and was aware of these things. I would also like to request everyone to consider this entirely as my own opinion. I am not trying to discredit their efforts on correcting these issues or justify them doing anything remotely problematic.

I think I know exactly what thread you might be talking about so I’m going to go through them one by one. As for racism, I think you’re referring to them using the n word while singing almost right after their debut. In which case, I would like to say that incident happened years ago and I really think the members did not know at that time that the use of this word is extremely offensive and disrespectful. And yes, the members did not explicitly verbally apologize for the use of the word. However, years after the backlash on WOH, Namjoon spoke out on a vlive about how he did not know nor realize that while he was trying to write lyrics and compose songs that stand up to the western hip hop song standards, he has addressed issues that were culturally insensitive and inappropriate. He also admitted that some lyrics might come across as objectifying, though he did not intend to do so through his songs(and till date they refrained from reperforming any of the songs that have controversial lyrics of any sorts).

He also added that while he can address a lot of issues that were problematic on their behalf, he sincerely apologized for all of them. He talked about how he discussed the topics they address in one of their songs with his sociology professor beforehand. Because he wanted to make sure that he can portray the message he wants through his songs rather than repeating the mistakes he made due to a lack of knowledge about the issues.

As for classism, I think this also occurred due to a lack of knowledge about how discriminating this comes across as. Mainstream hip-hop culture lyrics and how they use this concept commonly to show superiority over others, especially over their haters, might be one of the strongest reasons if you were referring to their use of this concept in their lyrics.

On the topic of colorism, I think the problem itself is way more complex in the Asian context. As an Asian person myself, I think I heard the words thrown towards me so casually so often as a teenager, I did not even acknowledge how problematic and disturbing these words were until I stumbled on these topics and their context on a broader view and decided to educate myself on these topics.

The majority of the issues related to cultural appropriation really have more to do with their stylists, than the members themselves. They did not/do not have much control over their outfits or styles. Even in shows such as In the Soop, they had to wear products of certain brands more than the other due to product placement. As for being disrespectful to the religions, Yoongi once spoke out about how knew very little about a certain religion and apologized to the fans, and requested them to correct him if they do something that is disrespectful.

Lastly, every single of these events happened years ago, and even though they did not bring up every single issue and explicitly apologize, Namjoon mentioned on a Vlive, that he is working towards acknowledging all these issues so that he can ensure that no member repeats these actions and that he thought being respectful with his words and proving them through their actions would be the best apology. And he truly kept his words and proved their good intentions time and time again.

You mentioned not feeling an innocent fondness towards them anymore because of the mistakes they made in the past, and I truly understand what makes you feel like that. I am going to go a bit off-track in here and talk a bit more about the context of why exactly is it tougher for people who have been born and raised Asian to understand or acknowledge these issues in the first place unless they deliberately make an effort to know and research about these topics.

In a Bangtan bomb, Namjoon kept saying in the background how hard is it for him to remember how to converse properly in English because he rarely needs to speak it back home. Also, Namjoon mentioned learning English from popular tv shows and songs. As I am also a person who learned English entirely from tv shows and songs, trust me when I say that as kids or teenagers who often heard people curse or use slurs so casually on television, I truly did not understand the severity of the offense of these words. I did not curse or use slurs myself, but if I saw someone else saying these things, I would not stop them either due to the lack of my knowledge and that act itself is something I am guilty of. Even though I apologized to the people, I understood that truly enlightening myself on these topics and refraining from repeating these actions is the best way for me to redeem myself.

Do all these justify the things they did? I do not think so. But neither does this justifies how often antis throw them under the bus for problematic things they did admit to and reflected upon over the years. I personally think what matters the most is the members acknowledged exactly why this comes across as problematic and refrained themselves from repeating any of these actions for years to come. Though their admittance to these things will not bring back innocent fondness, once you realize they are all human who made many mistakes in the past whether due to lack of knowledge or obliviousness. But I do hope you recognize their efforts on how hard they worked on themselves to improve.

As for whether you want to remain a fan or not, is entirely up to you, sweetheart. But I do hope I could somewhat portray the situation from the contextual point of view and whether they reflected on the matters afterward or not. If you have any more confusion on this, or if there are other incidents or topics I skipped entirely, please feel to reach out.

#anon #asks

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vishalkhatri9825 · 4 years ago

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6 Reasons : Why Work From Office is Better than WFH

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 6 announced the guidance for Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and IT-Enabled Services (ITES) players to lessen their consistence trouble for the industry and encourage “work from home” and “work from anywhere”. He further added, “The reform will certainly unleash the potential of our talented youth by making India as a preferred destination for Information and Knowledge Outsourcing Industry and would further the vision of AtmaNirbhar Bharat“.

Leaders of the IT and BPO industry in India commended the government’s transition to loosen up rules to enable IT and BPO organizations to embrace a permanent work from home/work from anywhere [WFH], considering it a game changer that could make a great job opportunities in small towns and cities. Reacting to this, software body Nasscom President Debjani Ghosh said, “This is one of those game-changing moments. As this bandwagon continues, there are some companies that have permanently decided to make partial or full WFH feature for certain roles in their organizations. As per Daminee Sawhney, VP-HR, Zomato, “We felt the biggest advantages were flexibility of work hours and saving the workforces’ travelling time, while the biggest challenge was ensuring every ‘zoman’ working remotely continued to feel connected and well supported”.

While Rishad Premji, who is the son of Wipro Founder Azim Premji said that although 98% of the Wipro employees are working from home, he wishes that all of them return to office and work, not from home. As per him, “The reality is culture grows by osmosis. Culture grows by people engaging at the ward coffee machine, or the water cooler, gossiping about the organization, exchanging notes.” The company can only grow when there is an inherent culture found.

However, since this WFH action has caused lot of controversies among the employers, there is wrangle between employees too. It works for some and not for others who are yearning to return to life as it seemed to be. Many employees feel that there is less distraction and they can work better compared to office. There will be increase in their productivity. But at the same time, few of them complaint about tired of working in isolation. WFH has lost charm for them and they miss their workplace interaction. With the uncertainty of COVID-19 situation, some employees seem quite done working from home.

So, the point here is WFH may be good in many ways and of course as productive as in an office space, but it is not enough. There is a mass who long office culture. This blog describes about the value of an office space and find doses of office time, even if it means working out from Swiggy, Starbucks or any other delivery services. The word OFFICE itself has some relevancy towards fun, enjoyment along with discipline, seriousness.

O-Office provides a landing field

What is a landing field? The place that allow people to get away from outside noise and provide comfort zone. That is the office space gives them comfort to move away from other things and get into the working zone. Well, this field does not mean physical space but a stress buster. Chats around the coffee machine and water area in between the work hours, releases your stress and align to focus on work. But the same background is not found at home, there is something that lacks while at home.

2 F-Familiarity with unknown

As said by Kio Stark, “When you talk to strangers, you’re making beautiful interruptions into the expected narrative of your daily life – and theirs.” The officemates, though unfamiliar, soon becomes pals and create a space for them in our life, despite being strangers initially. The office colleagues, elevator operators, people from different office but parking mates, regular faces at coffee area relaxes ourselves and bring in the positive vibes.

3 F-Food during office breaks

People definitely miss the lunch/dinner time during office hours. These are the times when people have any random conversation – be it what’s happening in city or their life, any other updates, mimicking or entertainment during lunch/dinner time interval, makes oneself stress-free from office workload. People miss that loud conversation, that collective informative discussion, sporty chats and much more. Specifically, when the office lunch/dinner is not upto the mark, the collective moaning or full on gossip regarding the same with colleagues are unquestionably to be missed. Of course, not to forget the time spent arguing about the food to order for lunch/dinner.

4 I-Interaction

Satya Nadella said to Times editors on aspects of managing during the pandemic, “More meetings start and end on time, but “what I miss is when you walk into a physical meeting, you are talking to the person that is next to you, you’re able to connect with them for the two minutes before and after.” Exactly…those intellectual interactions with your nearby colleagues cannot happen on online meeting. With WFH due to COVID-19, those brainstorming yet a fruitful interaction go missing.

5 C- Closure of the day

Office leads good vibes not only by just waving your officemates but also by greeting ‘Good Morning’ to the colleagues. Positive impact is generated even when other staff members bid goodbye daily to you while physically leaving from the office for their respective homes. This is just not possible with WFH situation; online goodbye never gives you that feel. It takes lot of effort to form an ‘imaginary line of exit’.

6 E- Expression of face and body goes missing

When it comes to office meeting, it is the body language of the colleagues that plays vital role in implementing the thoughts into actions. There are non-verbal cues that make you determine the seriousness of the workplace. Online meeting may help express with words but you may miss out on body language and also the non-verbal cues that include posture to expression – extremely important for any official project meetings. One cannot gauge the body language when people login from different stations.

To sum it up, WFH is not a new concept to many now, but it may not fill the workers up with tremendous achievement. There is always a lingering sense of lack of being joyous and giving better output without having social surrounding with respect to office pals. After all, Men Is A Social Animal. He needs space to interact, converse and mingle but COVID-19 has certainly hastened the process.

Apart from this, everybody’s situation is different at home. There is a risk of higher physiological and psychological discomfort when WFH is the only option. Inadequate spacing, poor ventilation or lights, unergonomic furniture and also continuous disturbance from surrounding may increase stress and also hamper the quality of work. Social distancing and isolation from colleagues and friends have deprived those who are away from family for the work purpose, WFH have made them lonely to larger extent. There are partial chances of home being converted to office completely.

Keeping these factors in mind, many of the online digital platforms like Khatriji that provides path for mobile, DTH and datacard recharge along with utility bill payment for electricity, landline, broadband, gas pipeline have applied work from office strategy only.

Thus, despite support from the government regarding the WFH system, it is yet a debatable question among both employees and employers.

Originally Article Published : 6 Reasons : Why Work From Office is Better than WFH

#officebreaks #workfromhome #workfromoffice #workplaceinteraction

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twisttech · 4 years ago

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Here Are 6 Reasons Why Working Remotely Is Better For Workers Than Working In A Traditional Office Environment

O-Office provides a landing field

2 F-Familiarity with unknown

As said by Kio Stark, “When you talk to strangers, you’re making beautiful interruptions into the expected narrative of your daily life – and theirs.”

The office mates, though unfamiliar, soon becomes pals and create a space for them in our life, despite being strangers initially. The office colleagues, elevator operators, people from different office but parking mates, regular faces at coffee area relaxes ourselves and bring in the positive vibes.

3 F-Food during office breaks

4 I-Interaction

Exactly…those intellectual interactions with your nearby colleagues cannot happen on online meeting. With WFH due to COVID-19, those brainstorming yet a fruitful interaction go missing.

5 C- Closure of the day

6 E- Expression of face and body goes missing

Thus, despite support from the government regarding the WFH system, it is yet a debatable question among both employees and employers.

#atmanirbharbharat #officebreaks #workplaceinteraction #officemates #officemeeting #workfromhome #workfromoffice

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evilelitest2 · 8 years ago

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100 Days of Trump Day 47: The Jimquisition

Welcome back to 100 Days of Trump, where I try to use 100 works to understand WTF happened in 2016. And at first glance a lot of you are going to be confused by my choice, cause i’m recommending a video game channel that talks primarily about video games....how does that relate to Trump? Well I’ve always said that the way to understand Trump is to look at the gaming industry, because a lot of what happens there applies to the larger political world, specifically in regards to corporations. We live in a corporate dominated world, they wield a tremendous amount of influence over every aspect of our lives and there isn’t really a clear guideline to how to respond to it. Everywhere we look we see corporate narratives justifying or advocating its own interests, and far more than governments, these massive private organizations can seem really hard to understand, after all we mostly relate too them in term of products, so how can we get into their head space, particularly when they are so involved in politics so their head space is vitally important to us.

Enter Jim Sterling or Jim Fucking Sterling Son to his friends, a neurotic, egotistical, kitch addicted video game vlogger with terrible taste in games. Let me make something clear first, I think Jim Sterling is a really shitty Game reviewer, generally speaking if he likes a game, there is a 50% chance it will be awful, and he is the most tacky human being on the planet. He also insists on filling his reviews with a bunch of nonsense stories and narratives in his videos (generally speaking if you want to avoid them skip until the gaming footage begins). He is also an absolute goddamn genius when it comes to the economic side of gaming and how to get properly respond in a corporate world. See, gaming as an industry is like a microcosm for America, the massive publishers corporations wield almost all of the power, the insider information about games is strictly guarded, the news organization around games are almost entirely subordinate to publishers, and the gaming community as a whole is constantly being shamed for having any degree of consumer advocacy. A sensation that most gamers have and I imagine this applies to most of us, is this sense of niggling guilt for not wanting to give extra money to a company because you happen to like the product they provide. That is where Jim Sterling comes in

Basically his show just looks at various business practices done by companies and calls them out on being greedy bastards who treat the consumers like cattle. And if the show was just that, it would in my view be enough because we need more people coming to say that consumers have a right to be protected, but it gets more interesting. Because over time, Jim kinda comes to understand the companies psychology, he is like a corporation whisperer. And (stop me if this sounds familiar) he also keeps running into issues with gamers furious at the way they are treating, but so utterly docicle to the corporate gaming machine that they can’t bring themselves to condem the companies, finding excuses for every example of bad behavior, usually directed at feminists or minorities as a scapegoat. Because its much easier to attack women for the problems in gaming, they can’t fight back as well as EA or Activation could. Sort of like how...working class whites are blaming refugees rather than the wealthy for their worsening economic conditions? I’ve said it before, understanding Gamergate is necessary for understanding Trump, and Gamergate is only possible in the toxic corporate atmosphere that was already part of gaming. There is an old joke about Gamers being pissed off all the time but a large part of that is that they are constantly under attack in their own hobby by the people make it, but because you know.....Nerd culture, they take that misdirected rage and turn it on much weaker targets, rather than target the people actually responsible, because fan loyalty is breed into these people.

Now i know what a lot of you are thinking “EE, this guy is a buffoon, he is a clown, why should I take anything he says seriously”? Well ladies and gentlemen, let me present his most brilliant contribution to our world, the copyright deadlock, which anybody who was worked with youtube should understand the genius of this.

youtube

Now this Jim updates once a week and there are hundreds of episodes, and since tumblr only allows me to embed 5 videos cause bullshit, so I am going to just show off five videos that highlight some of the topics he talks about which apply to the America that made Trump possibly

Number One:Corporate Apologists

Let me give an example, we have all heard corporate stooges go “Oh well companies exist to make money” as a way to excuse shitty behavior, here is an excellent rebuttal that works both in the gaming world and outside. Skip to 0:46 to get the actual content, it starts with an inside joke about pooping.

youtube

Number Two: Sexism in the Games industry

If you are remotely aware of the discourse towards feminism on the internet particularly in regards to media, you must have heard the old refrain about how “Well men in media are all musclebound and shit, so why do women bitch when they are all in skimpy outfits?” Well here is one of the best response videos explaining the difference

youtube

Follow up videos

How Gamers don’t understand that you can like something and still recognize problematic elements.

Gamers really think if you say something is sexist, that means you are going to take their game away and how totally anise that attitude is. That inability to think complexity, that inability to say “Wow, I really like The Wire but it doesn’t treat its female characters all that well” is a huge problem here, because they take any criticism as invalidating the whole game.

How having a discussion about diversity in Games isn’t the end of the world

A huge part of the reactionary movement currently gripping the country is the sense that we shouldn’t be even talking about sexism, racism, homophobia, classism, xenophobia, and ablism (which I put last because nobody wants to have a discussion about that), that even acknowledging the discussion is admitting a defeat to them, because its like what was discussed in the Angry Jack Videos, it is psychologically important to them that their isn’t a problem, otherwise they have to admit to being complicit at least in their minds.

Why corporation’s own self fulfilling prophesies lead to less female characters

You’ve likely heard the claim that female protagonists make less money than male ones so we can’t blame companies for not including them, but if you take a closer look, that just isn’t true. When ever video game designers try to make a female protagonists, they are just told “you can’t have a female protagonist” but there isn’t any actual data to support this choice, everybody just believes it blindly. Bioshock Infinite is pretty sexist and shit though

The bizarre “Fake Nerd Girl” myth and how self serving it is

Jim Sterling assumes for the sake of argument that Fake Nerd Girls actually exists, and then asks “So what?”

The fanbase’s weird response to the inclusion of GSM relationships

Jim is either Bi or Pansexual and he talks about how when any GSM relationship is included into a game there is some segment of the fanbase who freak the fuck out...over an optional bit of content they don't have to play that doesn’t effect them. This should sound familiar.

The total insanity of Gamer’s response to Anita Sarkeesian

Just his take on the whole affair and how completely over the top the response to Anita is, particularly how any legitimate criticism you might have of her is drowned out among all the insanity and rape threats.

Why the Default Straight Male Protagonist is easily avoidable

Diversity isn’t just nice, it is also actually good for the industry as a whole.

How companies will excuse lack of female protagonists in Bullshit Ways

When ever companies say “We can’t include women in our games cause money” it is lying. Follow up here

Manufactured Controversies

This should sound familiar to all of us by now.

Number 3: Liking the Product, Hating the Company

Link here

There is a problem in gaming, and otherwise where you really like a product provided by a company (Games, movies, food etc), but hate other things about the company, and you are constantly being told that if you condemn the companice’s practices, you are also hurting the thing you love. In particular, the notion of people Whining or are entitled for wanting some basic respect should sound very familiar to people.

Follow Up Videos

How Publishers really do put their interest before that of the players

This episode is interesting because Gamergate totally co-opted his rhetoric here and aimed it at...feminists of all people

How because of the corporate structure itself means even good ideas will be ruined

Jim Sterling liked the notion of DLC and Free to Play as a new business model, but because of the entire way corporations work, the whole idea is destroyed.

Why a blindly pro corporate policy actually hurts the market as a whole

I find it hilarious how so called capitalists get behind monopolies, aka the very thing capitalism was invented to oppose.

If you care about the the medium, you should be mad at the companies

Number 4: Why corporations aren’t actually all that bright.

youtube

We like to imagine corporations as these brilliant evil geniuses, but they are in fact mostly just incompetent, not so much captains of industry, but instead utter morons. And their desire to make all of their products as safe as possible isn’t just horrible for the consumer, its bad for us as well.

Why Polls aren’t absolute

This also applies to Hillary Clinton, polls aren’t objective fact.

The Games Industry love of Secrecy backfires on it

Even if something isn’t racist, the game’s industry reluctance to give out information makes it perfectly reasonable for people to assume so.

Market Stagnation is the inevitable result of corporation leadership structure

Number 5: Don’t fall for their Tricks

Same behavior, different label.

A company will often realize that people are angry at something so just rename it but keep it the same

Never believe a companies apology Part 1 and Part 2

Companies lose nothing by an apology, if they don’t change their behavior don’t give it any value (also applies to politicians)

Companies don’t understand how Prices work

Companies are so greedy and cowardly, they actually screw themselves over.

Hype Culture is inevitably bad

Hype Culture always backfires because when you build up the hype, people get disappointed, but of course it also makes money, so companies try to direct that rage at an easier target.

Also I want to leave on a last note here, because Jim Sterling actually does talk about corruption in Games Journalism....and isn’t a sexist. If Gamergate was actually about journalism, then Sterling would be leading the charge, not dismissing it Part 1 Part 2

Basically what i’m saying here is, Jim Sterling 2020

Finally I will leave you on this, how you should get angry at a company and how you shouldn’t. So much of the Trump/Brexit movement was people legitimately pissed off at something aiming it at people who weren’t responsible.

youtube

#100 Days of Trump #jimquisition #jim sterling #jim fucking sterling son #EA #Video Games #Customer advocate #activision #electronics arts #ubisoft #Thank god for me #Gamergate #DRM #Always online #Day one DLC #microtransactions

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thegreenwolf · 8 years ago

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[I know this is a long one, and potentially controversial. Do me a favor, please and read all the way to the end, and pay especial attention to the italicized bits? Thank you!]

Celtic Wicca. Samhain, the God of the Dead. Witches’ covens that extend back in an unbroken line thousands of years. These are just a few examples of the really bad history that’s been passed around the pagan community, and which has rightfully been skewered by those who have done better research. I came to paganism in the mid-1990s when Wicca was all the rage, and everything was plastered with Celtic knotwork. The Craft, Charmed and other media helped bolster support for aesthetic paganism that was more about looks than substance. A glut of books hit the market, many of which were full of historical inaccuracies from the mildly off to the blatantly awful.

Pagans with a decent background in history began to tear apart the inaccurate material, some of which had been floating around for decades (I’m looking at you, Margaret Murray!) We encouraged each other to go beyond strictly pagan books and explore historical texts, both those written for laypeople and more academic texts. We cited our sources more. And so now, twenty years later, while paganism still has its share of bad history, we have a lot more accurate information to apply to our paths, whether we’re hardcore reconstructionists or not. And we have space for things that aren’t necessarily historically accurate, but which we find personally relevant, like Unverified Personal Gnosis, or UPG (which you can read more about here.)

All this came out of a lot of discussions, along with debates and arguments. Post bad history in a busy pagan listserve circa 2000, and you were bound to get dozens of responses correcting you and offering good research material. And today wrong historical information is still swiftly corrected. What boggles my mind is that a lot of the same people who will throw down over historical inaccuracies won’t bat an eye when someone horribly misuses science. Woe be unto anyone who tries to say that Artemis and Freya are just different faces of the same Great Goddess, but sure, we can say that quantum entanglement proves magick is real without a doubt. Whatevs, it’s your belief, right?

In Defense of Facts

Wrong. Just as history deals in facts, so does science. Yes, there’s room for errors (accidental and deliberate) and updated research, but that doesn’t negate the general tendency of both of these fields of study and practice to deal in the most accurate information we have available to us. We’ve gotten good at pointing out where pagans are over-reaching historically through speculation and UPG. We suck at doing so for those speculating beyond what science has demonstrated to be true or impossible. It’s the same error at play: when history or science don’t have a clear answer–or the answer that you want–you don’t get to just make up whatever you want and say that it’s equally real.

Lots of anecdotes do not equal “anecdata”. No matter how much you really, really, really want to believe that you can make streetlights turn off just by walking under them, the evidence we do have is pointing toward it just being an occasionally blinking streetlight and good timing. It’s also confirmation bias in that you’re seeing what you want to see and that affects your “results”. No one has yet created a substantial, well-crafted study that even remotely suggests a person can affect the electrical flow to a light bulb (other than by physically tampering with the wires, unscrewing the bulb or turning off the power.) A group of people walking back and forth under a streetlight does not a solid experiment make.

Yet paganism is full to the brim with people claiming they can do similarly supernatural things. Look at the proliferation of spells that claim to be able to aid in healing, take away curses, or even affect political outcomes. That’s saying that “If I burn this candle or bury this herbal sachet or say these words over here, that thing or person or situation wayyyy over there will be directly affected in the way I want it to.” Sure, your process was more elaborate than just walking in proximity of your target, but you have no more evidence of causation than that other guy. And look at how many pagans claim that a simple spell is every bit as effective as a complicated one. Doesn’t it follow, then, that the simplest spell–walking under the light with the intent of making it blink off–has every bit the chance of working as something more complex?

Why We Treat Science Differently

But that’s getting away from the point. I think we don’t want to be sticklers for science in the same way that we’re sticklers for history because we don’t want our sacred cows slaughtered. Our beliefs can still hold up when we question historical inaccuracies because many modern pagan beliefs are based in history, and better history means better justification for our beliefs because “our ancestors believed it!”

But many of our beliefs are also based in pseudoscience, as well as bad interpretations of good science (like the misapplication of quantum anything to trying to prove magick is objectively real). When we start picking apart the scientific inaccuracies in our paths, it feels threatening and uncomfortable. If you feel a sense of control because you literally believe that a spell you cast will change a situation you’re anxious about, then you don’t want to question the efficacy of that act because you feel you’ve lost control again. If your connection to nature is primarily through thinking the local animals show up in your yard because you have special animal-attracting energy, the fact that they’re more likely just looking for food, shelter, and other normal animal things makes you feel less inherently connected. So instead of focusing on aligning our paths more closely with scientific research as well as historical research, we instead cling tightly to justifications.

The Rewards of Accuracy

I think that pressing for more historical accuracy has made paganism stronger as a whole, both as individuals and as a community. We’ve spent decades working to be taken more seriously as a religious group, sometimes to gain big steps forward like equal recognition for our deceased military pagans, other times to just be able to mention our religion without being laughed at. Those who want to emphasize to non-pagans that our paths have historical precedent and long-time relevance have more resources to do so. There are other benefits: Those who want to emulate the ways of pre-Christian religions have more material to work with. And history offers more depth to explore; your interest in a particular ancient spiritual path can extend out into knowing more about the culture, people and landscape that that path developed in. If you’re creating a new path for the 21st century, you have more inspiration to work with when you see what’s worked for pagan religions in both the distant and recent past.

Science has a lot to offer us as well. As a naturalist pagan–and a pagan naturalist–my path is deepened, and I find greater meaning, the more I learn about and experience the non-human natural world. I don’t need to believe the blacktail deer outside my studio are there because they have some special message for me. It’s enough that I can observe them quietly from the window as they go about their lives, our paths intersecting by proximity. I do not need to drink water from their hoofprints to attempt to gain shapeshifting powers; I can imagine a bit of what it is to be them when I follow their trails through the pines and see the places that are important to them. And that makes me even more invested in protecting their fragile ecosystem; my path urges me to give back to nature.

When pagans step out of the narrow confines of symbolism, and act as though nature is sacred because we know how threatened it is through the science of ecology, not only do we deepen our connections to nature, but we also show the rest of the world that we walk our talk. It’s just one way in which we demonstrate that, as with our historical accuracy, we’re also interested in scientific accuracy, rather than denying or ignoring facts in favor of our own spiritual self-satisfaction. And rather than getting entangled in self-centered interpretations of nature that elevate us as the special beings deserving of nature’s messages, a more scientific approach to paganism humbles us and reminds us that we are just one tiny part of a vast, beautiful, unimaginably complex world full of natural wonders that science can help us better explore and understand.

Conclusion

As always, I’m not saying don’t have beliefs. Beliefs have plenty of good effects, from strengthening social bonds to bringing us comfort when things go haywire to helping us make some subjective sense of the world through storytelling and mythos. UPG can be a really valuable tool in giving us a place to put the things we believe that don’t fit into known historical research, and I think we need to extend it to hold beliefs that go outside known scientific evidence, too. So keep working your spells and your rituals, and keep working with the deities and spirits that you hold dear. If you derive personal meaning by feeling that the crows are nearby because of some spiritually significant reason and it improves your life, don’t let go of that, so long as you also accept that the crows are just crows doing crow things.

But we also need to be able to make use of critical thinking skills and suss out areas where we’re factually wrong, no matter how we may personally feel about the matter. That way, as with history, we’re able to clearly say “This is the portion of my belief system that matches up with known facts, and this part over here is more personal.” We’ve learned to be skeptical of the claims of people who say that historians are wrong and they have the REAL history; we should be able to do the same for those who claim to know better than thousands of scientists.

What I am also asking you to do is really question your beliefs, their foundations, and where they intersect with and diverge from science (and history, while we’re at it.) If you have a belief that runs directly counter to known facts and you feel it has to be every bit as real as science or history, ask yourself why. What would happen if you allowed that belief to be UPG, or personal mythology? What would happen if you let it go entirely? What would you have left, and what value does it have?

I can’t say where this process of questioning will take you, whether you’ll let go of your beliefs, or recategorize their place in your life, or just cling to them more tightly. Every person’s path winds in its own direction. But just as we have questioned our historical inaccuracies and come out the better for it, I think that as individuals and as a community we can benefit from really questioning scientific inaccuracies in the same way. Won’t you join me in this effort?

If you enjoyed this post, please consider picking up a copy of one of my books, which blend a naturalist’s approach to the world with pagan meaning and mythology–Nature Spirituality From the Ground Up is especially relevant!

#pagan #paganism #UPG #science #Wicca #mine

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pinkiepieaddict · 6 years ago

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THIS is why we put up with the townies.

One of the questions that I’ve been asked a lot since starting these journal (Probably the second most common question after “Can you make me a Futa-Garnet plushie with removable panites”) has been “Why do you put up with the townies?” It’s obvious that most of the people in my town don’t like them, and that many of us would prefer it if they lived somewhere else. But the truth of the matter is that we need them, and without them it’s unlikely that we would be able to go on as a town for much longer. My town is pretty small even by the standards of Small town America, and we’re pretty remote. We look at small towns on TV, like Hawkins, Bridgeville or Gatlin, and we think that they are the proverbial big city. Bustling metropolises with suburbs larger than us. For most of our history this has suited us pretty well. Being small and remote has allowed us to preserve a sense of community and culture that’s been lost in many places, but it has also meant that we’ve stagnated as a town, and during the post war years it - with the introduction of reliable television and radio services – it became apparent to a lot of people that there was a big wide world out there with a lot of possibilities that we simply couldn’t offer them. People began to leave. Many of them didn’t come back, and they left at a rate which was too high to replace simply by people having more children. The first place that this hit were family farms, which gradually began to find that there simply wasn’t enough labor available to sow and harvest. More than a few commercial farms became subsistence farms, and more than a few subsistence farms became abandoned farms. This meant less produce being sold outside of the town, and less money being brought in. Which in turn meant less money being spent with local businesses and less taxable income for the town hall. For a while we struggled on, using the promise of cheap land and fertile soil to attract farmers from other parts of the country to settle here. We also used our geographic isolation to our advantage by attracting people suffering from cold war paranoia. Mostly preppers and survivalists who wanted to make sure that when\if the bombs dropped, or when\if society crumbled, they would be far enough away from from everything to survive. But swapping one generation of subsistence farmers for another can only get you so far, and survivalists and attracting preppers who are concerned with self sufficiency is not a good way to expand a town. So we needed to find a new source of people, and a new form of investment for the town. Several of the larger farms, including my own family farm adapted to modern times by joining an organic farming collective. We leveraged the fact that our soil was fertile and chemical free, and started growing crops and raising livestock for export to expensive restaurants and markets on the coast, where people were willing to pay considerable sums of money for produce that we could barely sell for a profit locally. Many of us also started up small businesses from out farms. My own family opened up a commercial gunsmiths and a business selling premium leather goods to the country and western\rodeo scene, and later on we joined a sustainable living collective to help people wanting to reduce their dependence on others for energy and water. But all of this benefited us more than the town, as we tended reinvested most of our profits into our farms and businesses. After much discussion, and more than a little controversy, the town hall used its funds to buy derelict properties and abandoned farms. The dusted off the cobwebs (and in a couple of cases moved the dead bodies), and found an agency willing to sell them to people seeking a simpler way of life. The agreement was that they buy the properties for below market value, and would be exempt from a lot of local taxes and zoning ordinances, and in return they would use local material and labor to renovate the properties. For the most part this went well, and the town hall was able to leverage the success of the scheme to get a loan, which it then used to make more land available, and to renovate more properties so that they could be sold at a higher price. This began while I was out of the country, so by the time I was back the first set of townies were already well established, and I tend not to think of them as townies quite so much as they tended to be conservative and pragmatic people. The kind of people who would move to a small town, and renovate an old farm house for the love of it. The second set of townies were starting to arrive when I came back to the US, and they were the ones that I tend to think of as townies. Mostly because they were less inclined to renovate than the first set of new arrivals, and more inclined to pay people to renovate for them. They were people who wanted to escape from the rat race, and from the hustle and bustle of the suburbs, but who liked the idea of country living without really understanding what it mean. This is kinda where things started to go astray. My town brought in a public relations company to manage the sales, and that company targeted people based on their fears and worries claiming that small town life could resolve all of their problems. It’s not spoken of openly, but they essentially took advantage of white flight by targeting white people looking to live in a white town where white values kept minority problems at bay. People who wanted to get their children away from bad (minority) influences, and (minority) crime. That kind of thing. So, we tended to get people who considered themselves to be conservative, but whom were mostly just white people from the suburbs that blamed minorities for everything that they didn’t like. They were also the kind of people who had enough money to uproot their families and move them across the country on a whim. Which meant that their children were used to a suburban lifestyle with suburban conveniences, and that when they inevitably rebelled they sided with all of the things that their parents hated. AKA liberalism and minorities. And we were caught in the crossfire. These are the townies who raise petitions and who like to talk about things such as sexism and racism without really understanding what they mean. Despite some teething trouble, and some rather unhappy townie kids, this expansion went well. The townies brought a lot of new money with them, and they used a lot of local resources. New grocery stores were opened to sell things to the new residents, and new products appeared on the shelves as well. Two lumber mills that had been closed since the 1980s even reopened. One of they by the original owners. Other new businesses opened to support the new residents, and it was generally agreed that the boost that this brought to our local economy was worth the inconvenience of having to pick townies out of drainage ditches, or rescuing them from trees, in fields with angry bulls. Capitalizing on the success of selling the renovated houses the town hall decided to go into the building game. They borrowed more money, and took advantage of several government grants, and they built a series of small eco-communities. Essentially neighborhoods filled with homes that were deigned form the ground up to be environmentally friendly. They had all of the latest technology to give them low energy and water consumption, and even had micro generation facilities such as wind and solar power. It was quite a big gamble, but it paid off almost instantly. A national house builder set up a branch here, as did a machinery rental company. Individually they were the largest investments that the town had ever seen. And on the strength of them being here more companies invested in the town in order to get a piece of the pie. Then the next wave of townies arrived, and you only need to read my journals to see the problems that they caused. To be fair, most of what happened was entirely predictable. We wanted people with more money, so we offered them all of the modern conveniences, but in a setting that was free from the worries of the modern world. So we ended up attracting people who had more money and who were more used to modern conveniences, but who also had more worries about the modern world than the previous set of townies We essentially built a gated community, and populated it with wealthy overly protective helicopter parents from coastal states who believed that they were moving into a small town themed pioneers village, and their overly protected, overly entitled children. Children who had lead extremely sheltered lives, who were raised to believe that they were perfect, and that the world existed to service them. Children that the townies who were already here considered to be a bunch of snowflakes. Children who resented being uprooted from their comfortable suburbs and moved to a hick town on the middle of nowhere were the nearest shopping mall was three towns over, and the average number of bars on their phone was 1, or maybe 2. I’m sure that you can guess how well that went. And if you can’t guess, just read my journals and see. These are the townies who are totally helpless and totally clueless, and who jump on every bandwagon that they see. Attempting to fill the voids in their lives with any cause that they can cling to or any group that makes them feel like they belong to something. But that was then and this is now. Our town is no longer stagnating. Tax revenue has never been higher. We are getting more external investment than we’ve ever had, and this has enabled us to repair and enhance pretty much every aspect of town life and infrastructure. Before the townies came here the average internet speed in the center of town was 128k, and at the peripheries it was 28.8 on dial-up. Now, you can expect 30mb in the town center, 100mb in the eco-homes, and on the peripheries download speeds are sitting between 2 and 8mb, depending whether your are on cable or microwave dish. We have a new civic center. You can get national cable TV in most places. The roads into\out of town have all been resurface. And there is a regular bus service running on them. We can buy more products in the local stores than ever before. Stores even stocks 3 types of tampon. Which is a big change from the past when they stocked 2 (these being the type that was too big, and the type that was too small), and courier services now come here, which makes it possible for people such as myself to do things like open up online stores selling our products to the rest of the country. Yes, there have been trade offs, and a lot of teething trouble, and yes the townie kids are a pain to live with, but it’s because of them and their parents that the town now has a future. Before the townies came we were essentially a backwater that was threatening to become a ghost town. A place populated by farmers who were to stubborn to leave, and preppers waiting for society to crumble so that they could stand up and proclaim “I told you so”. Now, we're a town with a future. So, in short, we put up with the townies because we need them. And having them here is a trade off that we have had to make.

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evirtual-tech-blog · 7 years ago

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How to Hire Magento Developer : Tips for Making the Right Hiring Decisions Quickly

A short while ago, we collaborated with our talented software developer recruiters to create a short checklist of recruitment best practices for our clients. The goal of the checklist was to enable us to connect our clients with the most suitable candidates, and to help them make the right hiring decisions quickly and never miss a great software developer again.

And then, a thought struck us: why keep all this knowledge inside when we can share it with the world? This is exactly what we’re doing in this post.

However, before we start, here are a few quick words on our background. We started out on the software development market about 6 years ago, and since that time, we’ve helped lots of clients hire magento developer in India. As you can imagine, we’ve tried and tested a plethora of recruitment techniques on our journey, and now we’re sharing the ones that have worked best for us and our clients. Jump right in!

Software / Magento Developer Recruitment: During the Interview Don’t rely on first impressions alone. Much has been written about how crucial the first few minutes of an interview are. However, relying on your first impressions too much won’t help you build a realistic picture of a candidate. It has been proved that techniques such as sample tests, general mental ability and structured interviews (behavioral and/or situational) are much more effective when it comes to helping predict a candidate’s on-the-job performance. Don’t worry though, you don’t necessarily have to include all of these methods into your interviewing process, but consider trying one or two of them to see whether they yield better results compared to your current routine.

Follow a structured interview process. It’s highly unlikely that you’ll be able to conduct a good interview if your approach is fully off the cuff. As such, it’d be wise to get ready beforehand. Prepare a list of questions and topics you definitely want to discuss, while also thinking about the order in which you want to discuss them. Include real business cases to challenge your candidates. That being said, don’t get too stressed out if an interview takes a different route, and be ready to adjust to the situation if the need arises. As it is with all things in life, balance is key.

Give candidates a reason to join your team. In a perfect world, candidates would walk out of their interviews with you thinking your job is the only job they would ever sign up for. Sadly, our world is far from perfect. In India, the competition for skilled programmers is at an all time high, and we’re sure the situation isn’t much different in your home country either. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t aim for perfection, but the important thing is to let your candidates understand why the projects you’ll be working on together matter. Ask yourself, “What makes my company great? Why is our product better than that of the competition? What is the mission of my company? What makes it unique?” Then, present your answers to the candidates.

Encourage candidates to ask questions. An interview is a two-way street. It isn’t just a chance for you to grill your candidates, but also an opportunity for them to find out more about your business and corporate culture. Some people will be pretty confident and ask you all sorts of questions without any prompting on your part, but the shier ones will need a little encouragement. Remember to be open and honest in your answers, and to use this opportunity to build a personal connection with the candidate.

Test Assignments Keep your test assignments on the short side. Sure, you want to see the candidate’s full potential before hiring them. But keep in mind that test assignments that are too long and complicated can deter even the most enthusiastic developers from going ahead. So make sure your test assignments will take candidates no longer than 3 or 4 hours to complete.

After the Interview and the Test Assignment Get back to candidates with feedback on their test assignment at your earliest convenience. Ideally, this should be within two or three days. Do your best to provide candidates with a detailed review of their performance — even if the answer is going to be “no”. Not only will you soften the blow for the unsuccessful candidates by pointing out the areas of their test assignment that you did like and giving them a few helpful tips, you’ll also contribute to building a positive employer brand for your company.

Be prepared to make hiring decisions fast. In India, as it is in the rest of the world, the tech sector is booming, which means quality developers don’t stay unemployed for long. Based on our experience, even a one-week delay in making the hiring decision is sometimes enough to lose a good candidate. Therefore, if you’ve found an engineer that seems like a good fit for your needs, don’t hesitate to get them on board.

Working Through an IT Staffing Company Provide the staffing partner with in-depth information about the skillsets you require and the projects you’re hiring for. You know your business needs better than anyone else, so your real goal is to help the staffing partner help you. Any additional information you can provide will enable them to get a greater number of high quality developers interested in your position, and you won’t have to deal with candidates who fit your requirements poorly.

Work with one staffing partner only. This is a controversial one, but we’re sure you’ll agree that managing your hiring process effectively is much easier when your attention isn’t divided between multiple software developer recruitment agencies at one time.

If You’re Recruiting Software and Web Developers Remotely Consider inviting successful candidates to your headquarters. Even though most of your communication with your remote employees will happen through an instant messaging app of some kind, the best move is to invest in some real face time at the start of your cooperation. Face-to-face communication will help you get to know your new developers better, and give you the opportunity to establish effective business relationships based on trust from day one. An added advantage is that most candidates will view business trips as an extra bonus when considering joining your team.

If you’re going to relocate successful candidates, consider your relocation package beforehand, and don’t forget to tell the candidate (or your staffing partner) exactly what expenses you’re going cover, and what legal procedures the successful candidates will need to go through in order to join you.

Final Conclusion: While getting into interviews with the potential for a new job or even profession should be exciting, it can also be both challenging, particularly for your first interview. While it can be somewhat frustrating and even a bit terrifying to go down the street of the interview procedure at first, the potential for a new job or even a career that is waiting for you is incredibly interesting and worthwhile.

Hopefully the following information has offered you all the details and resources you need to be completely ready for your next programmer interview and to start that tour with that excellent new job that is waiting for you!

Originally Posted on: https://www.whatech.com/ecommerce/press-release/299483-how-to-hire-magento-developer-tips-for-making-the-right-hiring-decisions-quickly

#hire magento developer in india #magento development #magento migration #magento2 development

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nicemango-feed · 7 years ago

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Forbidden Intersectionality: Liberal + (Ex) Muslim

Some of you may have seen my interview on Cracked recently. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to speak on a larger platform. Below is a blogpost thats basically an extension of my thoughts from there: ------- Being of Muslim background in the West right now...in this Trumpian, 'rising far right' era is tough enough as it is....but being a secular, non-religious person of Muslim background is a whole other level of fucked up at the moment... So many of us thought there weren't others like us, questioning Islam, questioning conservatism in our communities...because these things just aren't talked about. The risks are too great especially if you're living in a Muslim majority country like Pakistan or Saudi Arabia (the two places I've lived). And when, through the internet, we found each other....us secular/agnostic/atheist types of Muslim background were just so relieved that there were others...that there was a growing voice for us...that we banded together on something that doesn't tell you much about a person's values: rejecting/challenging religion. Now...as the political climate changes in the West, we see the cracks in the ex/reformist Muslim movement more obviously than ever. There are those of us who were coming at it from the angle of opposing conservatism, rightwingery whatever form it may take, and others who were specifically only opposing Islam. As a result the people who prioritize opposing Islam alone, are happy now to side with the Western right. Some even going as far as joining anti-Muslim movements, the alt-right, supporting Trump, etc. Back in the old country, expressing doubt about religion or challenging cultural boundaries can mean serious consequences. At the very least resulting in alienation and being ostracized, disowned, ex communicated (we are not free from this consequence in the West either) ....and at worst it means things like blasphemy accusations, death. So I do understand where the anger and bitterness some have is coming from (I don't excuse it, but I can see what created it). This taboo and loneliness surrounding Islamic apostasy is also why finding others simply to align with you on this one thing feels so big, that almost nothing else matters.

However, as more and more of us come out and express ourselves, we begin to see the diversity among Islam's apostates too. Still we are often lumped in as one, and even at times put on an unnecessary pedestal in the western atheist scene when discussing Islam. I hate to be the one to say it, but ex-Muslims can be wrong in their assessments and opinions of Islam too, like anyone else. And if they are allying with the Dave Rubin's and Kekistanis of this world then it's increasingly important to see beyond the 'ex Muslim = they're infallible when it comes to speaking about Islam' view. Ex-Muslims too can overshoot in their criticism or overreact, tainting a movement that began with thoughtful critique.

Yes the stigma and risks that come with apostasy in Islam are high and frightening. I'm a living example of how high the stakes are, I have to work under a pseudonym to feel safe. But at the same time, it's important to keep in mind that things aren't always that intolerant and there are all types of people in countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia too, people who are struggling to be heard - further silencing them with generalizations is not only unjust but also counterproductive if reducing extremism is the goal. Liberal, accepting-of-apostasy Muslim families do exist there, but sadly in small numbers. It is voices from those minorities that need to be empowered...but so rarely are. Instead, the narrative that Muslims are always conservative rules the airwaves in the West, be it left or right leaning media. Yes...there are crazy mullahs saying ridiculous, vile, intolerant things (often focused on by the right) ....and yes there are hijabi women who need our solidarity (often focused on by the left), but Muslim existence isn't limited to these simple caricatures - yet most representation of them is (and no, I'm not drawing a moral equivalence between vile intolerant mullahs and peaceful conservative Muslim women who wear a headscarf). It's been incredibly hard to break that mould...and the few instances of people trying to represent the more secular, liberal types of Muslim existence are met with a huge amount of resistance from all across the political spectrum. I mean....we already have so much to deal with from within the community, that tacking on these external battles, simply for a foothold... for a place to say "I'm here, and I exist"...are disheartening and exhausting. As if dealing with angry Mullah’s against fun and freedom wasn’t hard enough! Image from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7IpMIhR6Yg

The left, the right, Muslims and non Muslims too, can all be hurdles for secular, liberal and progressive Muslims.

This is so incredibly untrue, as secular, liberal portrayals of Muslims are onlyjust starting to break through into the mainstream. While we have a wholehost of characters that play the token religious character, or 'the terrorist', etc.

There's really no winning as a 'secular Muslim'.

People want to shove you into a box with extremists and nothing will stop them.

"Why don't Muslims tolerate apostasy, it's outrageous!" - well here's a Muslim woman

expressing support for people who have left the faith, and this is what she has to hear.

Why Don't Muslims fight for LGBT rights? Some do. And when it's not the western far right trying to get them to adhere to a literalist interpretation of Islam, it's a Muslim right-winger who wants to drag them back.

Muslims lie. There you have it. Because lying is totally unique to Muslims.

There really is no winning. As a liberal+Muslim, someone always turns up

to either discredit that you're truly liberal or that you're truly Muslim.

And thus, 'Forbidden intersectionality'.

---------

As an ex-Muslim, I still very much consider myself a part of the Muslim community - like any secular Jew or Christian would consider themselves connected through culture, shared history, family, holidays, etc. Never before has my need to identify and stand in solidarity with the Muslim community felt more pronounced, than in a time Muslim registries and Muslim bans are casually being spoken of in mainstream discourse.

This is truly terrifying for anyone of Muslim background.

When it comes to things like the registry or being barred from entering the US, I don’t think secular, non-believer status matters. And when it comes to hate crimes, I'm pretty sure no one will bother checking how devout you are, either.

In fact, there have been many victims of anti-Muslim hate crime that just happened to have brown skin, or weren’t even remotely Muslim.

All this certainly complicates things for those of us from within who do have legitimate critiques of the community and of Islamic fundamentalism. How do we demand progress in a political climate rife with anti-Muslim sentiment?

Battling Homophobia in a Muslim context

The orthodoxy Islam still commands worldwide in its adherents is unmatched by most other mainstream religions in the 21st century. For example the countries that still carry a potential death penalty for homosexuality are largely Muslim.

Three years ago I wrote and illustrated an anti-homophobia children’s book set in Pakistan, called My Chacha (uncle) is Gay (you can get a copy here).

As I mentioned in my Cracked interview,

"I was delighted when it got picked up by some schools in the Toronto area and was used as a resource for The Day of Pink (which is an anti bullying initiative)."

The book was read out in classrooms and assemblies, and the response was incredibly supportive at first. Then, as parents 'discovered' that not only were their children read an LGBT-positive book *gasssp* ...but were read one set in Pakistan, the outrage began.

Many claimed it was an assault on their religion, and a misrepresentation of it. Some said I was attacking the moral fibre of the ‘Muslim family', I received countless death and rape threats. Some referred to me as Wajb ul Qatal - 'worthy of killing’, they wished STD’s and Sharia punishments of being 'stoned to death' upon my *fictional* character Chacha.

This went on for quite some time.

The most amusing comments called me 'Satan’s daughter' or compared my children's book's evilness -evels to that of Salman Rushdie’s notorious Satanic Verses! I am not worthy, but I’ll take the compliment with pride. In Toronto a radio show broadcasted calls from angry parents, punctuated with a few obligatory calls from people defending the book. Some parents threatened to sue the school board, and predictably the LGBT supporting liberal school board backed away from such a book. It was never used in an official capacity again. There were warnings being circulated on Islamic sites that people should protect their children from corruption, as they too could be exposed to this gay-turning, soul-sucking 15 line picture book.

As I said on Cracked, "Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) published a blog post claiming that the school board was the one bullying parents into teaching their kids about LGBT diversity. I was branded an ‘Islamophobe’ and that was it - a resource that many children/teachers enjoyed and found useful was no longer available." When Muslim communities have problems with integration or accepting values like being LGBT positive, the way to tackle that would be precisely through such resources. But often in the face of accusations of Islamophobia even books about love and tolerance are tossed out as controversial. It's the kids who lose out the most. Just recently, a conservative Islamic lecturer discovered my book and posted about it's 'evil agenda', sending a fresh new batch of threats and haters my way.

Click to enlarge

On the other side of this battle right wing non-Muslims accused me of trying to ‘sanitize homophobia’ in Islam and said that nice gay uncles like this simply didn’t exist in Pakistan, that I was painting a rosy picture of what it was like to be gay in a Muslim country, that Chacha would have been stoned to death in reality. I mean…it was a fictional children’s book, thus obviously simplified to a great degree. It's incredibly frustrating that If ever people from the Muslim world are challenging things and pushing boundaries the Western right often wants to pull them back to standards that Islamists would be proud of.

For one side I was an Islamophobe, for the other a sanitizer of Sharia. And that pretty much encapsulates what it's like to discuss Islam as a liberal (ex) Muslim nowadays, caught between a rock and a hard place.

It's like walking a tightrope...you point out there's homophobia in Muslim culture and you risk that being grabbed and used by people who want to ban Muslims.

What do you do, when stuck at this impossible junction... Being liberal and Muslim is unacceptable...invisible even.

Image from Cracked.com

It simply doesn't fit the narrative - but being liberal and ex muslim is also an overlap that many days, seems unmaintainable.

Often, you are not accepted by fellow liberals in the west (because Islamophobic) or you're not accepted by those who are interested in critiques of Islam because those circles are increasingly becoming anti-sjw, anti-feminist, anti-left...

Having few and mild opinions about the Western far-right is appreciated by many in the audience that will inevitably be drawn to you for your criticism of Islam. They usually tell you to stfu about Trump ...and accuse you of Taqqiya (an obscure concept in Islam which I only heard about in the West) if you don't, because they want to get to the 'good stuff'...the part where you confirm their ideas about generalizing Muslim immigrants, and act as a shield from accusations of bigotry.

My small patreon $ goes up when i criticize islam and goes down when I don't. This is an incredibly depressing view.

— Eiynah -- (@NiceMangos) September 6, 2017

We-ell thats not gonna happen with me....and I can't seem to keep quiet about Dave Rubin and Gad Saad, Peterson, Shermer...I certainly won't be going on Breitbart or Rebel Media to talk about how there's no place for Islam on the planet. So.....that leaves me walking a rather lonely path....and as you can read in my tweet above, often has me wondering what my place is in all this. If it's even worth it to try and counter the avalanche of bs, that seems to be coming from within the ex-Muslim movement...bs like, 'Islam can't be reformed', 'there's no place for it on the planet', 'Islam is worse than Nazism.' I mean, at this point the discussion really seems to have left the grown up table.

The Term Islamophobia Adds to the Confusion The waters are so muddied, that the term really does more harm than good. Allowing any criticism of Islamic fundamentalism, homophobia, etc. to be labelled as 'Islamophobia', gives right wing fundamentalist Muslims a chance to shield the religion from valid criticism. It's essentially the same thing as right wing Christians trying to shield their religion from criticism. Think of the absurdity of the 'War on Christmas' to get a feel for how 'Islamophobia' sounds to us. That's why I prefer the more precise term, 'anti-Muslim bigotry'. The problem is not theological criticisms of Islam or criticisms of literalist interpretations, it is the generalizations, hatred and fear-mongering around Muslims. Seeing the confusion surrounding this, the Western far-right swoops in to claim that "Islamophobia" isn't real even when its being used to describe blatant anti-Muslim bigotry. The cries of "Islam is not a race", while technically true...ring hollow in a climate where brown people are targeted based on their skin colour and appearance. And thus the cycle of confusion continues.

As anti-muslim sentiment skyrockets, the emboldened far-right uses this opportunity to gain more support. As the Western far right lashes out at Muslims, the Muslim far-right uses that opportunity to also gain more support. And the rest of us, are well and truly fucked by them both. The Hijab Debate

The Hijab is a hot topic, both within Muslim circles and outside. Well-meaning Western liberals tend to overcompensate in their desire to make Muslims feel accepted and can end up championing conservatism from our communities. This is particularly tricky now, because Muslim women are in actuality being attacked for their modesty garments. So in the West, it's not exactly on the same footing as opposing something like a Christian purity ball or virginity pledge - though it largely comes from the same place and regard for women. As a woman who grew up in a theocracy, Saudi Arabia, I was forced to wear modesty garments by the state and have encountered "morality police" on several occasions. I have seen them hit my mother's ankle with a cane for letting her headscarf slip. The memories are not pleasant. So...for me, it's rather distasteful to see the constant celebration of modesty garb. It leaves me feeling very isolated from my fellow liberals, who I assumed would stand with me in opposing body-shaming of women in my culture too. Simultaneously, I can understand that it has become hard to oppose a garment that is causing women to be targeted. My personal solution to this is that I stand in solidarity with hijab and niqab wearing Muslims when it comes to bigots singling them out because they are visibly Muslim. But I still vehemently oppose the concept of a requirement for women to cover up so as not to invoke lust. Both things can and should be done together. One can show solidarity with hijabis without championing the hijab as some great symbol of liberation, which it clearly isn't, as many Muslim girls and women continue to be forced into modesty against their will. The Media gives little coverage to Muslims who don't 'Look like Muslims' There is so much noise around supporting the hijab that non hijabi Muslim women are drowned out. This results in a very one dimensional coverage, that yet again perpetuates the stereotype that 'Muslim' is synonymous with 'conservative Muslim'. Even Playboy Magazine isn't immune to this and had to get in on the hijab celebration! Another example of this misguided support is the Shepard Fairey poster from the Women's March.

An admittedly powerful, iconic poster of a woman in a US flag hijab was displayed as part of a series. It was seen as a symbol of resistance, as the 'anti-Trump'. But it's hard for women like me to get behind one form of conservative symbolism to oppose another form of conservatism. So I created some artwork accompanied by a short audio message explaining that we do indeed need to show solidarity with hijabi Muslim women, but perhaps this wasn't the best method since there are many connotations to such a garment, not all positive.

Despite my clearly liberal sentiments and disclaimers that it was not to be used by people spreading hate towards Muslims, despite my opposition to Trump expressed in the audio message the post was widely retweeted by Trump fan accounts as well.

It seems there's almost nothing we can do to prevent this.

Either you suffer in silence under the homophobic, misogynistic Islamic far-right, or you risk emboldening the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant Western one.

In fact both LGBT and women's rights in Islamic countries are causes appropriated by the Western far-right now. In Alt-Right/Lite circles, you'll see gay rights used as a white nationalist tactic, it's deeply concerning and sinister that an ideology so troubling can be dressed up as 'human rights'.

They use these things as a cudgel, a mere pretext to bash Muslims with.

The trick is to express a faux-concern over these things not being up to par in the Islamic world, while having little regard for the same in your own part of the world. I cannot tell you how many Western anti-feminists champion women's rights when it comes to Islam, but will callously tell Western rape victims that they are privileged because at least they don't live under Sharia.

Difficult Dualities

Whether it's accusations of Islamophobia or fears of emboldening anti-Muslim hate, either way, we are silenced. Just like any culture we too should be able to criticize our own, without being branded sell-outs, traitors or Islamophobes.

Except there is one problem.

In this complex political climate there *is* an actual loss of credibility too, which I covered in my interview;

"As more and more Muslim Reformers/Ex Muslims either get on the Trump Train, defend the Muslim Ban or join the Alt Right."

And on the left, secular, liberal Muslims continue to not be adequately represented. This tips the scales massively towards high-visibility of right-wing critics of Islam.

Well known Ex-Muslim Breitbart Editor, Raheem Kassam, has said things like "If Merkel took a million rapey migrants, Hillary will take 20 million"

We also have the 'red-pilled' ex-Muslim types, who believe no Muslims are peaceful.

Now I as an ex-Muslim can tell you, that this is not representative of *all* ex-Muslims obviously, and there are many compassionate, progressive people among us. But the movement has taken an undeniable rightward turn without many denouncing the bad actors that are nudging the movement further towards Pepe.

This is definitely not what I signed up for.

YouTube shows that regularly feature alt right/lite figures will also court ex and reformist Muslims to come and criticize Islam from their platforms.

When you go on Breitbart, or Rebel Media to criticize Islam - how can you complain that the Left won't take your voice seriously.

Credibility is a two way street.

I would urge my fellow liberals to not champion Islamic conservatism and I would urge my fellow ex-Muslims to not prove critics of the ex-Muslim and Islamic reform movements correct by allying with the Western right and supporting/downplaying things like the Muslim Ban.

This rightward shift of Islam critics has even produced a Trump-supporting, anti-multiculturalism Imam, would you believe it?

2017, what a year!

The Imam once put out an 11-step plan to crack down on Wahhabism, a literalist and harsh interpretation of Islam. It sounds reasonable in theory, but reads more like an authoritarian plan to put ordinary Muslims under strict surveillance. Australian media has dubbed him the 'Fake Sheikh'

ABC states,

"...Unsurprisingly, Tawhidi's tales about Sunni Muslims' shadowy plot to instate Caliphate have been enthusiastically embraced by the far-Right, including Reclaim Australia. Perhaps less expected is the extent to which Tawhidi himself has courted such groups. In the lead-up to last year's federal election, he made offerings of roses to roadside anti-Muslim Liberty Alliance and One Nation posters, as if the face of Pauline Hanson belonged not to Australia's most recognisable anti-Islam campaigner, but a titian-haired deity."

He throws around terms like 'Fake News' and 'Lying Left' - reminiscent of Trump himself.

It's no surprise the term 'red-pilled Muslim' is also seen in comments from his fans. I honestly never thought I'd see that combination of words, but 2017 is full of surprises.

I hope that one day, just like Sam Bee or The Daily Show, progressive Muslims can earnestly push for change without getting lumped in with or enticed by those with an anti-Muslim agenda.

Islam is not a monolith, neither are its adherents nor its critics. Just like Islam can be interpreted and practised in a million different ways so too can criticism of it come from different angles and politics. It's important to be aware of the general Trump-era anti-Muslim climate, but its also important not to erase the few secular, liberal and progressive Muslims that exist.

Recognize that people in my position are fighting a battle against bigotry from all angles.

------------ A huge thanks to all my Patrons who make this work possible! To those who's support for me doesn't depend upon how much I criticize Islam and Islam alone, those who signed up recently, and to those who have been there for a while....your support and encouragement mean so much! If you enjoy my work please consider supporting via Patreon

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njawaidofficial · 7 years ago

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'Big Brother 19' Allison Grodner Rich Meehan Preview Interview

New Post has been published on http://styleveryday.com/2017/06/29/big-brother-19-allison-grodner-rich-meehan-preview-interview/

'Big Brother 19' Allison Grodner Rich Meehan Preview Interview

Allison Grodner and Rich Meehan had toyed with naming their production company Human Zoo, and an afternoon spent at the Big Brother season 19 house reveals why.

Inside the house, the 16 houseguests are seen sitting on one another’s laps, dancing while doing the dishes in the kitchen, and even screaming. Observing them just inches away are the longtime executive producers behind the CBS reality series, who settled on Fly on the Wall Entertainment instead.

And that’s exactly what The Hollywood Reporter was when invited for a close-up look behind the scenes of the summer staple: a fly on the wall.

While the houseguests are trapped inside the house as they fight for half a million dollars, Grodner, Meehan and a staff of over 400 are locked away outside of it, in a compound with several floors, multiple rooms and hundreds of monitors.

In Grodner’s main office, there’s a flat screen mounted on the wall to keep an eye on what they still refer to as the human zoo. (She says the houseguests often compare themselves to the dolphins at Sea World.)

Next door to Grodner’s office is Meehan’s, both located on the “story” floor where they have just finished editing the season’s premiere episode. Upstairs is the control room, where a team sits intensely focused on logging the cast’s every move. Next to that is a room housing the audio crew who are tasked with listening to what the houseguests are saying. Farther down the hall is the operating station that connects directly to the famous diary room, where one houseguest is currently discussing religion and how another player’s story made them cry.

It’s just another day at the Big Brother house as the long-running reality hit gears up for its 19th season. After pulling the Big Brother curtain back, THR sat down with the producing team behind the series to discuss what fans can expect this season, their recent live-stream collaboration with Katy Perry and why an all-stars season may never come to fruition.

The name Fly on the Wall Entertainment is a nod to the show, yes?

Allison Grodner: It’s also the programming and unscripted world that we’re in. I come from a documentary background and the way that we like to do these shows is [to be] a fly on the wall, eavesdropping on real life. Big Brother is an example of that. Maybe it’s not completely real life, but within the confines of this bubble it is as real as can be. It’s the ultimate social experiment.

What were the other names that were tossed around?

Rich Meehan: The Human Zoo! And you now know why!

Your first all-online version of the series, Big Brother: Over the Top, was also the first series for CBS All Access. Will it come back?

Grodner: CBS and CBS All Access were really happy with how it did. It’s just a matter of what’s going on with CBS All Access, which we don’t know yet.

Meehan: Star Trek: Discovery is coming out and that’s their next thing. I don’t know what their strategy is.

Grodner: We all learned a lot. It was fun to try and re-imagine this series and how to do something in a live 24/7 format as its primary outlet. We learned what works with the audience and what doesn’t.

Last year it premiered a week after season 18’s finale wrapped. If it does come back do you want it to air immediately following this season again?

Grodner: Well, personally … (Laughs.)

Meehan: The big thing is, what is that time frame? How soon after the summer? But you also have to keep it away from the next summer. What is that perfect time period in the middle? I’m not sure.

Grodner: You want them to be separate. Part of the reason we have survived as long as we have is that it’s a summer event. Other shows do multiple seasons. With Big Brother it’s that one-time special event. You don’t want to infringe on that.

In partnership with YouTube, another digital venture you produced this year is Katy Perry’s Witness World Wide where she invited fans in to watch her live for 96 hours in an effort to promote her latest album. Throughout the live stream she confessed her fandom for Big Brother with guests including Sia pointing out how similar the setup of her special was to the show. How were you approached for this?

Grodner: Live-stream has been a big part of Big Brother since the very beginning, and it’s interesting how technology has caught up with it. We’ve always been a multiplatform show. Katy Perry had this idea to live-stream her life at the launch of her album. It had a lot to do with the themes of her album. It was all her idea. Her and her camp came to us —

Meehan: And said they wanted to do a reality event.

Grodner: We thought it was an interesting way to use the live feed.

What were the biggest challenges you faced with this project specifically?

Meehan: Trying to build the production, scheduling it, booking it all while keeping everything a secret. We had six weeks to pull the production together. It was like putting together a reality show, a talk show and a musical performance all at once with limited time.

Was it produced here out of this studio, like Big Brother?

Grodner: Not at all. It was a four-day event on location. It was very different in terms of the way that it’s technically set up. We had to invent how to do live-stream from a remote location, not a studio where we have the infrastructure and the wiring and everything that’s here. Because of our experience with BBOTT and Big Brother, we were a logical company for them to come to. This year we’ve been doing more live programming.

We also had This is Life Live on TLC. It was a four-day event as well, just by coincidence. We went live across the country where we did four nights in a row, two cities each night, opening it up to live moments for each episode. TLC announced that we are doing it again. It’s something we’re uniquely qualified for and something we really like. The way to use live and/or live feed in unscripted is fascinating. With Katy Perry, it was a giant marketing stunt.

What was Perry looking to get out of this?

Grodner: She wanted it to be streamed live and she didn’t want to see any of the crew. She wanted to feel like she was just her and not on a television show.

Meehan: She wanted just real people around her. Why we’re diving more into the world of live streaming is it seems like you need to figure out ways to get something to cut through. What the cool part of Witness World Wide was was something would happen and it would become the pop culture news of the day.

What makes someone an ideal subject for this format?

Meehan: You need a subject who is willing to allow an unfiltered look at their lives. If you are going to be live 24/7, you can’t hide who you are and the audience is savvy enough to know when you are not being genuine.

This summer there’s has been the return push for unscripted content on broadcast networks. Why do you think that is?

Meehan: One hour dramas were ruling for a long time.

Grodner: Budgets for unscripted tend to be lower. That’s something that works better in the summer. There’s a ton of unscripted shows in the pipeline along many networks right now, which is good. There was a little less in the past years. [For newer shows,] it is really hard to cut through though. When you got a new show now everyone just wants a second season. It’s amazing that we’re on season 19 of this show and there are only a handful of shows like that right now. We have a fan base that has grown with us generationally. In casting, we see people in their early 20s say, “I’ve been watching this with my mom since I was a kid.” That’s nice that we’ve been able to hold on to more generations, but that’s hard.

Which reality series do you view as your biggest competitor?

Grodner: Biggest competitor? Is there one? (Laughs.) We’ve been able to hold steady where we are.

Meehan: If we can have three shows in the top 10 every week, we’re happy. We tend to start out strong and then slowly grow. Some shows start big and then fade.

Grodner: Slow and steady wins the race! We’re not going to pretend we’re number one all the time. America’s Got Talent is having a great season. We have a company that’s doing more than just Big Brother. We want to be working all through the year. When unscripted shows do well, it’s good for the genre. Even though Big Brother has been on the air for this long, it is still very cutting-edge in what we do. We’re turning out three hours of primetime television every week, going live to the internet and having this complete multiplatform experience. So, what’s the next place to bring the reality genre? One of the places that has really been popping for us and is the future of unscripted is working within a live space.

One of the biggest conversations in reality TV right now is the Bachelor in Paradise controversy. They have resumed filming, but what do you make of how everything went down?

Grodner: We’re dealing with real people and real situations on all of these shows. I don’t work on that show, but I believe they feel the same: that the safety of our contestants is a priority and always has been.

On the Bachelor franchise, it’s known that alcohol is unlimited. On Big Brother, the alcohol provided to the contestants is scarce. What’s your philosophy behind that?

Grodner: It’s a controlled amount. We are dealing with a very intense situation in tight quarters and they can be locked in the house for days, so everything that is consumed in the house is controlled by the production.

Meehan: It’s a pressure cooker in there, and anytime we put alcohol in, it’s a very small amount.

What were the conversations like ahead of this season and deciding on the twist?

Meehan: [We decided on the temptation twist] in March. We had multiple concepts that we really liked and we presented them to CBS. We landed on this as the one we were going with. We walked them through the basic strokes of it.

Grodner: Temptation has always been a theme throughout the show. It’s something that happens. Are you tempted to get into a showmance? Are you tempted to go against a group because something is being offered to you? If we made that the theme of this whole summer we thought we could make it bigger and better.

Throughout the years, the cast of Big Brother has been diverse in terms of their backgrounds, religious values and political views, but usually politics doesn’t come into play. With the current political climate, how do you see that changing this season?

Meehan: There’s definitely different political views in the house.

Have they been talked about yet?

Meehan: I have not heard it. People are smart enough to know it’s a hot-button issue. But they’re still getting comfortable in there.

Grodner: They haven’t been in there long enough to see the differences. We absolutely are representing the country and have a cross-section of voters, supporters and non-supporters of our current president. But I don’t know if that will become a big topic in the house. Even though we are representing that cross-section here, I really hope that Big Brother becomes an escape from what we are all being bombarded with.

As it stands now, who are the early standouts who have a real shot at winning?

Grodner: (Looks at the live monitor of all the houseguests.) If Megan [Lowder, the 28-year-old dog walker who once worked in a prison in the Middle East] doesn’t burn herself out early it’s very possible because she is smart and a leader. Do you know who is playing a great social game right now? Dominique [Cooper.]

Are there any showmances already blossoming in the house?

Grodner: There’s certainly attraction for sure. Mark, who is a romantic, is already smitten with Jessica [Graf.]

Meehan: He hangs out with Christmas a lot too.

Grodner: There are a lot. You just saw as we were walking through Christmas and Matt [she was sitting on his lap.] But earlier I saw Raven [Walton] and Matt!

What have the past few days looked like in the house?

Grodner: Right now, we’re in the only time of Big Brother where we’re not live. But already within the first 48 hours we have seen flirting, lines drawn, alliances and our first big fight!

Who are the likely suspects for that fight?

Groder: Strong personalities.

Meehan: It was a man and a woman, and a temptation played into it.

Grodner: It’s in the Thursday night show. There are temptations everywhere and when you take a temptation, there’s a consequence. It’s bound to spark drama if someone takes a temptation.

Meehan: In night two, there was a temptation in the head of household competition that someone took. It shocked people and caused a bit of an argument.

On premiere night, how are the first temptations presented to them?

Meehan: They were tempted by money, safety and power. The first one was a large cash temptation.

The show has already been renewed for season 20 and the online speculation is that you will focus on the all-stars. Any truth to those rumors?

Meehan: I’ve heard those rumors too! (Laughs.) We haven’t talked about it. It would be interesting to do with 20.

Grodner: But we haven’t talked about it yet. Is it even possible? Is that something the audience really wants to see? Do you really want to see all returners now? I don’t know.

Meehan: Also, I don’t know if we could get all the people we want.

Grodner: It’s been a long time.

Meehan: A lot of them are married with kids and they’ve evolved so much. They’re different people now.

Did you watch Katy Perry’s live stream? How do you think the pop star would do in the real Big Brother house? And do you really want to see an all-stars season next year? Sound off in the comments section below and stay tuned to The Live Feed for all things Big Brother.

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chaospirations · 8 years ago

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via Wikimedia Commons

Annie Jacobsen is no stranger to controversy, and she certainly does not part company with it in her upcoming book Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government’s Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis (to be released on Mar 28, 2017). Lifting the veil of government conspiracies and secret programs that powers that be would rather be left unnoticed is a niche that Jacobsen has embraced with great success. So much so, the yet-to-be released Phenomena, has already been picked up by Blumhouse and Amblin for a drama based on the book to be made into a television series. While this newest book deals with the secret experiments, programs and all-around interest of the United States government when it comes to extra-sensory phenomena, we revisit another title Jacobsen penned that set the world ablaze in 2011 with new allegations concerning America’s most famous secret base: Area 51.

Reality T.V.’s obsession with programming featuring conspiracy theories, paranormal happenings and ancient extraterrestrials was in full swing in 2011. The public couldn’t get enough stories about conspiracies and aliens to sate their ever-growing appetite for entertainment. This time of ever-blossoming interest for all things paranormal gave rise to opportunities to propose a story concerning government conspiracies involving the cover-up of seemingly intergalactic proportions, which were not only popular and lucrative at that time, but profitable. Several authors, speakers and media producers took full advantage of the opportunity presented them and the genre expanded greatly. In the meantime, investigative journalist and author Annie Jacobsen would uncover a shocking secret while researching her book about Area 51, which would lead the author head-on into a firestorm of controversy.

In June of 2011, the book “Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base” by author and L.A. Times writer Annie Jacobsen was released after several years of gathering research, unclassified documents and eyewitness testimony. Jacobsen had presented new evidence in a starkly informative narrative that took the reader through critical events and decisions that would bring about the creation and operation of the base, as well as insight into the top-secret projects and “black” operations that made the United States the leader in stealth and high-altitude flight. She would describe the fascinating lives of some of the test pilots, security guards and engineers brought previously unimagined technological advances into reality, and Jacobsen would also address the ubiquitous mythology of Area 51’s involvement with the wreckage of the crashed alien flying saucer from Roswell, New Mexico in a shocking and ghastly revelation.

That same year the book “Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base” by author and L.A. Times writer Annie Jacobsen after several years of gathering research, unclassified documents and eyewitness testimony. Jacobsen had presented new evidence the body of research she had collated into a chronology of Area 51, but soon Jacobsen was the one in the spotlight. Shortly following the book’s release came a firestorm of controversy about horrific allegations of crimes against humanity by the former Soviet Union and the United States with the most egregious of which Jacobsen describes in the last seven pages of the work. The mainstream media it seemed, only focused on those final seven pages. Then the focus went from the story to Annie Jacobsen herself in a media backlash that would call into question the credibility of one of her unnamed sources from the book. The irony of the media attacking one of their own for not revealing information about an unnamed source, who was for all intensive purposes acting as a whistleblower, was lost upon most, if not all her most vehement critics.

WARNING:

If you plan on reading the book, stop reading this article now. Major points in the book are revealed from here on out.

On the off chance that you have lived in complete media and cultural isolation, “Area 51” is a household name that has been given to the secret facility in the Nevada desert that has captivated millions with its association to alleged research of acquired off-world technology and unidentified flying objects. Author Annie Jacobsen presented a historical record of the base that focuses on the decisions made by some of the most influential and important individuals of the twentieth century that you may have never heard of. Those decisions, as presented by Jacobsen, would be influenced by the desperate struggle for technological and international power between the United States and the former Soviet Union which culminated in the development and deployment of secret spy planes containing advances in stealth, performance and capabilities that would have seemed like science fiction during the cold war. However, aliens (or the insinuation of extraterrestrial activity) are not the focus of this book, but a means to an unfortunate and disturbing end.

In the book, Annie Jacobsen’s unnamed source explains that on July 7, 1947 what crashed on a remote ranch near Roswell, New Mexico was a flying saucer, but it had not come from outer space. In 1938, a Halloween broadcast of a radio play based on H.G. Well’s book “War of the Worlds” had reportedly cause a panic in the streets of America. Whether the panic was actually widespread or embellished by the media at the time is still a bone of contention, but the news of panic reportedly made its way to Joseph Stalin, the then leader of the Soviet Union. Stalin recognized that the apparent tendency for the citizens of the United States to panic when provoked, and sought a way to (no pun intended) capitalize on it.

Jacobsen makes the claim in the book that Stalin had German scientists he had German scientists and engineers that were smuggled, coaxed or kidnapped from Germany after WWII at his disposal. He set upon them the task of constructing a flying disc, one so revolutionary and strange that would make the Americans that it was from another planet. If the craft alone would not send the citizens of the United States taking to the streets in fear from an apparent alien invasion, the unearthly crew would. Also for a short time at his disposal, Stalin had one of the most infamous monsters of the third Reich; Josef Mengele. As the story goes, Mengele had surgically mutilated children for Stalin, to produce the crew for the “alien” spacecraft that Stalin was to send to the United States that would physically resemble the popular notion of what an alien from another planet would physiologically resemble. The craft and occupants were spirited away to Wright Patterson Air Force Base, then ultimately to the top secret facility at Groom Lake, Area 51. There. According to Jacobson’s source, the United States government began to reconstruct the craft, and unbelievably, the crew themselves. This would include conducting human experimentation on physically and mentally handicapped children as well as prisoners, all of whom were non-consenting participants.

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The media leaped on this disclosure as if there was nothing else in the book. There were dozens of televised and print interviews that focused on the book’s revelation that the “aliens” from Roswell weren’t aliens on her whirlwind book tour. The press couldn’t get enough. However, the invitations for Jacobson to talk with the press would soon become “hit pieces,” interview and articles would soon attacking her credibility as an investigative journalist.

In May of 2011, Annie Jacobsen was featured on a Segment of the television news magazine, ‘Nightline.’ Correspondent Bill Weir questioned the validity of the story in aggressive fashion, and asked to speak to her unnamed source. Weir stated in the interview that Nightline was able to “track down” her source and interviewed him themselves, and he recounted the Roswell incident again. But Weir was insistent that due to the age of the witness, and the fact that his story could not be corroborated, made him an unreliable source. Weir also focused on the allegation that the source said that “he never touched the people in that craft” where in Jacobsen’s book it is stated he held them. Weir wraps up the segment insinuating that the book is a work of fiction by telling viewers to focus on “the real legacy of Area 51; the men who risked their lives in thankless silence” just moments after he calls into question the reliability of Jacobson’s source by citing that Korean War veterans that described massacres that never happened.

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Popular Mechanics featured an article in the May 2011 issue featuring an interview with Jacobsen discussing the highlights of the book, but a few months after the Weir’s hit piece aired on Nightline, on September 12, 2011 the magazine published another article… this making a point to contest several of the claims Jacobson’s source had disclosed, as well as systematically cataloging errors found throughout the book.

Throughout the media backlash, one thing was apparent. The media was more concerned with discrediting Annie Jacobsen and her source than protecting the identity of her source. In the media, protecting the identity of an unnamed source is a standard practice, and protecting the identity of an unnamed source that happens to be technically, a government whistleblower, should be paramount. Bill Weir of Nightline tracked down her source and conducted one single interview of unknown (but much, much less time than Jacobsen) length with the man that Jacobsen had spent hundreds of hours with over an extended period of time, and the Popular Mechanics article even complained to the publisher about having an unnamed source in the book. Are we to believe that Popular Mechanics has never used an unnamed source or that they do not have early access to emerging technology when it comes to military vehicles, weapons and aircraft?

Perhaps what occurred here is the embellishment of a story from a kind old man with impeccable credentials or maybe it is a case of an author who throws a shocking claim in the end of their book in order to boost controversy and sales. However, what if this is a case of an author who got too close to the truth. What if this is a case of a seasoned and well-respected journalist and author that revealed something that was never to be revealed and the backlash and media smear was actually a campaign to suppress not her story, but THE story? It is said that every myth has its origins in the truth. Did Annie Jacobsen actually uncover what happened at Roswell, or present a story to the public that was so close to the truth that it drew the attention of entities that do not want the real story to ever be exposed?

Have we not seen how our own government, namely the Central Intelligence Agency, has manipulated media stories around the world with disinformation campaigns and expertly placing false information in order to influence the behavior of consumers of such media? The concepts of propaganda, media manipulation and selective release or withholding of information by both the government and the media were well-known and employed, so who are we to trust? Also, assuming something did crash in the desert in 1947, would it be more believable that a foreign government would attempt perform a hoax on the United States than alien beings travelling millions of miles through the vast and dangerous distances through space just to get to Earth and crash in the middle of the desert during a thunderstorm. Jacobsen references this question with the metaphor of Occam’s razor in the book as well.

“Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base” by Annie Jacobsen is a well-written book, that is beside the point. Annie Jacobson hadn’t just written those last seven pages that triggered the media into a frenzy, she had constructed a compelling and engrossing narrative of the history of Area 51 throughout the entire book. The resulting backlash against the book by the press also demonstrated that even a respectable and credible author and investigative journalist can be the target of media scrutiny. To my knowledge, Annie Jacobson has never retracted or refuted the story told to her by her unnamed Area 51 source, and continues to vehemently defend them as a trusted eyewitness to the events described in her book.

Annie Jacobsen is the author of several intriguing, upsetting, and thought-provoking books and can be found on Amazon.com. Her newest book, Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government’s Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis, will be released on March 28, 2017.

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Revisiting Area 51: Annie Jacobson's Shot Across the Bow of Government Conspiracy. Annie Jacobsen is no stranger to controversy, and she certainly does not part company with it in her upcoming book Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S.

#Alien #Annie Jacobsen #Area 51 #book #CIA #conspiracy #disclosure #history #Phenomena #reading #Russia #scientists #secret #Top Secret #UFO

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russellthornton · 8 years ago

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12 Meaningful Topics that Ignite an Intellectual Conversation

In the age of Twitter and selfies, sometimes people don’t know how to start an intellectual conversation. But here are some topics to get you started.

Does it seem like having an intellectual conversation is a lost art these days? It sure does to me. I feel like every time I hang out with one of my friends, all they do is talk about their life… and their problems.

In fact, one time I hung out with a guy friend for 4 hours straight. And do you know how much he talked about his life? Three hours and fifty minutes. Yup. I talked about myself for about ten minutes.

And I never remotely get the chance to start an intellectual conversation with him. And even if I do, he goes off on a tangent about two minutes later. But he’s not the only one. So many people do this. So, if you’re as sick of this as I am, you can try to ignite some intellectual conversation with these topics.

12 topics to start an intellectual conversation

Whether you’re like me and are fed up with people who only talk about themselves, or you ARE someone who only talks about themselves and you want to change your ways… here are some topics you can use to start an intellectual conversation. [Read: The 15 highs and lows of dating someone smarter than you]

#1 The existence of aliens. C’mon. Everyone loves this topic! I mean, the movie ET was popular for a reason, right? Okay, well, maybe not everyone loved the movie because of the alien concept. Maybe they just thought ET was cute.

But regardless, everyone seems to have an opinion about whether or not aliens exist. After stating your opinions, you should both give reasoning and arguments for why you think you’re right.

#2 Alien abduction. While this is in the same generic category as the existence of aliens, it’s not exactly the same. But I suppose at least one of you would have to believe in aliens to even start this conversation.

There are people out there who claim to have been abducted by aliens. And quite frankly, their stories are pretty convincing. You might want to Google this one first so you have a lot of material to add to this intellectual conversation. [Read: Sex demons – Historical excuses for deviant sexual behavior]

#3 Political affiliations. I know everyone says to stay away from talking about politics. But really people, you can’t get away from it! Anyone who is on social media knows that people love spewing their political ideologies all over the place.

But, in order to have an intellectual conversation about politics, both people have to be objective and empathetic… especially if they disagree. But it can be quite enlightening and interesting to talk about this topic.

#4 Personality types. Are you familiar with the Myers-Briggs 16 Personality Types? If not, do some research on it. I’m sure you know what extroverts and introverts are, but there are also many different variations on it.

And some people are even both an introvert and extrovert at the same time. Those people are called ambiverts. There are a lot of interesting aspects to personality traits that can be discussed in an intellectual conversation. [Read: INTJ relationship – 15 things you need to know to decode them]

#5 Trivia. Okay, I’m terrible at trivia. I loathe Trivial Pursuit because I never know ANY of the answers. But, I do love listening to people who know a lot of trivia. It’s really interesting to sit and talk about random pieces of information that are fascinating.

You could even get a trivia book to brush up on all the facts and sit with the other person and go through it. That will spark some intellectual conversation for sure.

#6 The Afterlife. This intellectual conversation could be really fascinating, or it could be a train wreck – depending on who you are talking to. If you’re talking to a devout Catholic *or devout person of any religion*, they won’t want to debate the possibility of whether it exists or what it looks like.

On the other hand, if you’re talking to an atheist, they might also be pretty firm in their convictions. But it can be a great intellectual conversation if both people are open-minded and want to explore other possible views. [Read: Tongue-tied? Here are 35 brilliant conversation topics]

#7 Reincarnation. A subset of the “afterlife” conversation is the topic of reincarnation. I know the United States is a predominantly Christian country, so it is a controversial subject. But again, if both of you are open-minded and like to explore a lot of different ideas, this is a fun intellectual conversation to have.

Maybe you have had past life memories. Or maybe it’s just fun to talk about which era of human history would have been the most fun to live in. There are a lot of different ways you can take this intellectual conversation. [Read: How to keep a conversation going with the opposite sex]

#8 History. Just like the trivia topic, this could be a tricky one for some people. For me, I love history. I love hearing about it and watching TV or movies about it. But, my knowledge of it really stinks.

So maybe you know that someone is a history buff, well, ask them to tell you about what they know. You can turn it into an intellectual conversation by talking about things like whether or not Hitler was mentally ill… or is in Hell right now. The possibilities are endless for how to talk about history.

#9 Conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories are always fun to talk about, mostly because there really is no answer to them. There’s only speculation. There are ton you can choose from.

For example, do they think 9/11 was an inside job? Did Lee Harvey Oswalt really kill JFK? Do aliens exist and is the government hiding it from all of us *there I go again with the aliens!* Does the Illuminati really exist and if so, who is a part of it? [Read: Shocking sex cults – Crazy facts that you need to know]

#10 Analyzing deeper meanings of movies. Do you remember the movie Groundhog Day from the 1990s with Bill Murray? It seems like a silly, funny comedy, right? Well, if you look at it a lot deeper, it really follows the seven deadly sins like greed, lust, and gluttony.

If you don’t believe me, watch it again and you’ll see. There are a lot of hidden and deeper messages in a lot of movies, so why not sit back and pick apart some of your favorite movies and analyze them in an intellectual conversation?

#11 The news. Yeah, yeah, I know. The news is always negative. As the saying goes in journalism, “If it bleeds, it leads.” But regardless, the news is always an endless supply of interesting topics if you want to have an intellectual conversation. I don’t care if it’s a story about cyberbullying or a hurricane that’s about to hit somewhere, there’s always something you can do to analyze it.

Or just analyze news in general. Like, how biased is the media? Are they beholden to one particular power organization? Is there really free speech, or is our culture trying to squash it? There are many angles you can take when talking about the news or the media. [Read: How to be cultured in an age obsessed with social media]

#12 Goals and dreams. It seems like after we grow up, not only do we lose sight of our goals and dreams, sometimes people have told us through the years that they are either dumb or unattainable. So, why not talk about your wildest dreams?

Did you want to be an actor? Or sail around the world? It can also be practical goals and dreams, like how much money you want to have invested in the next 10 years. There are many aspects about goals and dreams that are fun to talk about in an intellectual conversation.

[Read: 17 ways to be a citizen of the world while living at home]

If you are craving an intellectual conversation, why not give these topics a try? When you do, trust me, you won’t ever want to talk about social media or taking selfies ever again.

The post 12 Meaningful Topics that Ignite an Intellectual Conversation is the original content of LovePanky - Your Guide to Better Love and Relationships.

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